THE 

WHITE  SLAVERY 

A  STUDY  OF  THE  PRESENT 
TRADES   UNION  SYSTEM. 

* 


By 

WILEY  BRITTON 

\\ 

Life  Member  American  Association  for  the  Advance- 
ment of  Science 

Author  of  The  Civil  War  on  the  Border 
In  Two  Volumes. 

i 

Manufactured  by  The  Werner  Company,  Akron,  O.  • 


Copyright,  1909, 
BY  WILEY   BRITTOIC 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 
A  STUDY  OF  THE  PRESENT  TRADES  UNION  SYSTEM. 

Chapter  I.  INTRODUCTION  i 

Chapter  II.  CONDITIONS  OF  SLAVERY 24 

Chapter  III.  THE  OPEN  SHOP  VERSUS  THE  CLOSED 

SHOP  48 

Chapter  IV.  THE  LOVE  OF  POWER 63 

Chapter  V.  PRIMITIVE  IDEALS  OF  THE  UNIONS.....  77 

Chapter  VI.  THE  UNIONS  A  LABOR  TRUST 91 

Chapter  VII.  "DOWN  WITH  THE  EMPLOYER!"  CRIES 

UNIONISM 104 

Chapter  VIII.  INJUSTICE  UNPROFITABLE 115 

Chapter  IX.  COERCIVE  METHODS  OF  THE  UNIONS 126 

Chapter  X.  THE  INDEPENDENT  WORKMAN  IVESTI- 

GATES 140 

Chapter          XI.    THE   UNIONS   DESTRUCTIVE   OF   SOCIAL 

ORDER 155 

Chapter        XII.    THE  UNIONS  A  DISLOYAL  ORGANIZATION  167 

Chapter      XIII.    THE  PESSIMISM  OF  THE  UNIONS 179 

Chapter       XIV.    THE  GENERAL  AND  STATE  GOVERNMENTS 

SUFFICIENT 194 

Chapter         XV.    SELLING  AND  BUYING  LABOR 204 

Chapter       XVI.    THE  WASTE  OF  UNIONISM 216 

Chapter     XVII.    THEY  LOSE  WHEN  THEY  WIN 227 

Chapter    XVIII.    To  SEE  OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SEE  Us.  236 
Chapter       XIX.    THE  UNIONS  A  LEAGUE  OF  ENVY,  HATE 

AND  SELFISHNESS 248 

Chapter         XX.    SLAVES  NEVER  WIN  THEIR  OWN  FREE- 
DOM UNAIDED  BY  OUTSIDE  INFLUENCES  265 
Chapter       XXI.    INSTITUTIONS  AND  MEN  JUDGED  BY  THEIR 

CONDUCT 274 

Chapter     XXII.    TRADE   SCHOOLS   TO   FURNISH    SKILLED 

LABOR    288 

Chapter    XXIII.    THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMPLOYER'S  AS- 
SOCIATIONS    302 

Chapter    XXIV.    SYMPOSIUM  ON  SOCIALISM 316 


248618 


PREFACE. 


We  are  amply  justified  in  referring  to  the  union 
officials  as  masters  of  the  white  slaves,  for  in  his 
trial  in  the  United  States  Court,  for  contempt  of  the 
courts  order,  Mr.  Gompers  has  caused  it  to  be  written 
in  the  record  of  that  court,  that  he  has  risen  from 
obscurity  to  become  as  he  expressed  it,  "the  master 
of  a  million  minds." 

We  are  justified  in  referring  to  the  unions  as  a 
disloyal  organization,  for  the  reason  that  its  officials 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  boast  defiantly,  flag- 
rantly and  offensively,  and  in  the  light  of  open  day, 
of  ignoring  and  trampling  upon  the  laws  of  the  land. 

And  we  are  justified  in  referring  to  the  unions  as 
a  league  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness,  for  the  reason 
that  the  speeches  and  conduct  and  teachings  of  the 
union  officials  are  full  of  hatred  towards  employers, 
free,  independent  workers  and  the  Government  of 
the  people,  and  in  endorsement  of  the  criminal  acts 
of  unionists. 

That  such  teachings  are  a  disintegrating  force,  a 
force  tending  to  disintegrate  the  social  aggregate, 
will  hardly  be  questioned  by  any  competent  student 
of  social  problems.  The  question  is  up  to  the  coun- 
try to  determine  whether  such  disintegration  is  desir- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

able.  To  those  who  love  our  country,  its  flag  and 
its  institutions  it  is  not  desirable.  To  those  who  hate 
our  government,  its  flag,  its  institutions  and  its  civili- 
zation, of  course  such  disintegration  is  desirable. 

We  regret  to  use  expressions  that  may  seem  harsh, 
but  war  in  its  mildest  form  is  harsh,  and  the  wicked 
war  of  the  unions  on  peaceable  communities  and 
individuals,  can  not  be  held  up  in  its  proper  light 
without  using  strong  expressions.  "We  do  not,  how- 
ever, believe  that  the  expressions  used  in  the  text 
are  stronger  than  the  language  of  some  of  the  court 
decisions  in  describing  the  conduct  of  labor  officials 
in  violating  and  defying  the  laws  of  the  country. 

The  reactionary  leaders  of  unionism  and  social- 
ism are  not  only  endeavoring  to  destroy  our  Govern- 
ment, with  all  the  institutions  built  up  under  it,  and 
all  individual  and  property  rights,  but  they  are  en- 
deavoring also  to  destroy  our  civilization,  to  undo 
all  that  evolution  has  done.  Their  primitive  ideals 
and  pessimistic  views  of  life,  lead  them  to  see  no 
good  in  the  present  government  of  the  world,  and 
what  we  call  the  highest  ideals  of  civilization,  so 
they  denounce  all  past  evolution  as  a  failure.  They 
hold  that  all  property  is  robbery,  and  would  have  us 
return  to  communism  and  socialism  in  their  most 
primitive  form,  which  is  the  embryonic  condition  of 
present  evolved  social  aggregates.  They  talk  about 
fraternity  and  equality  in  one  breath,  and  in  the  next 
denounce  in  the  most  violent  and  brutal  manner  all 
except  the  vicious  and  weak-minded  whom  they  are 
able  to  control.  The  battle  is  now  on  between  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

reactionary  forces  of  unionism  and  socialism  upon 
the  one  side,  and  the  progressive  forces  which  have 
brought  all  life  and  intelligence  to  their  present  con- 
dition, and  by  which  the  efficient  have  profited  by 
their  efficiency  and  the  inefficient  have  lost  out  be- 
cause of  their  inefficiency  upon  the  other. 

In  our  study  we  find  practically  all  the  vicious 
and  weak-minded  elements  of  the  country  in  the 
ranks  and  as  sympathizers  of  unionism  and  socialism. 
And  we  also  find  these  elements  controlled  and  di- 
rected by  the  most  intelligent  schemers  among  them 
to  coerce  all  other  classes  into  subjection.  The  world 
has  never  before  had  such  a  thoroughly  organized 
scheme  of  the  intelligent  vicious  to  use  the  weak- 
minded  and  vicious  as  a  club  to  control  and  enslave 
the  progressive  and  provident  classes  of  society. 

These  waves  of  the  organized  weak-minded  and 
vicious  elements  of  society,  have  many  times  sub- 
merged the  saner  parts  of  communities  and  are 
threatening  to  do  so  again. 

This  book  is  a  plea  for  the  largest  possible  meas- 
ure of  individual  freedom  consistent  with  the  equal 
freedom  of  all.  It  is  a  plea  for  equal  rights,  justice 
and  moderation  in  all  the  dealings  of  men  with  each 
other,  with  special  privileges  for  none.  It  is  a  plea 
for  the  abolition  of  all  coercive  methods  in  the  deal- 
ings of  men  with  each  other,  in  the  family,  in  the 
public  schools,  and  in  all  institutions  of  the  State, 
except  where  it  is  necessary  to  restrain  and  control 
the  insane  and  the  vicious  and  violent  in  penal  insti- 
tutions. It  is  a  plea  to  allow  the  efficient  to  profit 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

by  their  efficiency  within  the  limits  of  equal  freedom, 
and  to  help  along  the  inefficient  by  rational  altruism 
to  secure  to  them  all  that  is  due  them  on  account  of 
their  inefficiency.  It  is  a  plea  for  the  abolition  of 
the  White  Slavery  of  the  Unions  and  the  establish- 
ment of  free  manhood  throughout  the  country.  And 
finally,  it  is  a  plea  for  the  development  of  fraternal 
feelings  which  will  tend  to  strengthen  the  ties  that 
should  bind  our  people  together  in  common  fellow- 
ship and  interests. 

I  wish  to  express  my  appreciation  and  thanks  to 
Captain  Wilbur  F.  Henry,  a  distinguished  lawyer  of 
Kansas  City,  Missouri,  and  for  many  years  editor  of 
The  Western  Veteran,  for  his  kindness  in  reading 
my  manuscript  and  making  such  changes  as  were 
suggested  to  his  critical  mind. 

WILEY  BEITTON. 
KANSAS  CITY,  KANSAS. 


THE  WHITE  SLAYEEY 


— O  gales  of  the  sea  which  waftest  the  swift  ships 
through  the  silvery  waves,  through  the  surge  of  the 
ocean,  freighted  with  precious  human  lives,  be  un- 
propitious  to  the  fiends  of  the  unions,  who,  with 
dynamite  in  their  hands,  and  evil  intentions  in  their 
hearts,  are  ready  to  send  a  thousand  souls  to  the 
bottom  of  the  ocean,  because  some  traitor  to  his 
country,  some  traitor  to  human  kind,  some  labor 
union  official  did  not  have  his  demands  complied 
with  that  no  coal  should  be  used  by  the  steamer 
which  had  been  mined  by  the  hands  of  free,  inde- 
pendent workers. — Chapter  XIX. 


They  have  set  up  a  government  which  they  call 
The  Federation  of  Labor,  within  the  General  Govern- 
ment, and  claim  for  it  an  allegiance  and  authority 
paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  peoples  Govern- 
ment, and  have  made  laws  and  decrees  nullifying 
and  setting  aside  the  laws  enacted  by  the  peoples 
representatives. — Chapter  I. 


CHAPTER  I. 
INTRODUCTION. 


INDICTMENT    OF    THE    LEADERS. 

WHEN  a  child,  my  first  thoughts  about  life  were, 
that  I  should  grow  up  and  be  a  man  like  my  father 
and  be  free  like  him  to  do  as  I  pleased.  One  of  our 
neighbors  owned  a  few  slaves,  and  a  negro  man  of 
his  sometimes  came  to  our  house  on  errands  for 
his  master,  and  I  heard  my  father  speak  of  him  as 
belonging  to  our  neighbor  in  the  same  sense  as  a 
horse  belonging  to  him.  I  could  not  understand  how 
it  was  that  being  a  man  the  negro  could  belong  to 
another  man,  for  I  thought  that  all  full  grown  men 
should  be  free  to  do  as  they  wished  and  asked  father 
about  it.  He  explained  to  me  that  all  black  people 
belonged  to  white  people.  That  seemed  very  strange 
to  me,  for  I  thought  that  the  color  of  the  skin  should 
not  make  any  difference  as  to  their  freedom;  that 
when  any  one  got  to  be  a  man  he  should  be  free, 
and  I  grew  up  to  think  it  wrong  for  one  man  to  own 
another  on  account  of  the  color  of  his  skin,  and  I 
was  called  an  abolitionist,  a  terrible  name  in  a 
community  where  nearly  every  body  believed  in 
slavery.  Although  my  grand  parents  on  both  sides 

l 


2  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

owned  slaves,  as  I  grew  up  and  was  able  to  read  and 
think  about  the  matter  I  became  thoroughly  con- 
vinced that  it  was  wrong  for  one  man  to  own  another 
as  a  chattel,  and  would  discuss  the  proposition  with 
any  one  who  believed  in  negro  slavery,  even  in  a 
hostile  community  where  there  was  no  one  who  took 
my  view  of  the  matter  except  my  father. 

Presently  the  Civil  War  came  up  and  I  enlisted 
in  the  army  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  and 
in  the  four  years'  struggle  the  institution  of  slavery 
was  destroyed  and  the  slaves  emancipated.  When 
the  strife  and  turmoil  of  the  Civil  War  was  ended, 
I  was  strongly  impressed  with  the  idea  that  the 
minds  of  all  classes  of  men  in  this  country,  even  of 
statesmen  and  men  of  science,  were  so  enslaved  by 
tradition  that  they  had  the  most  irrational  beliefs 
as  to  the  age  of  the  world  and  the  constitution  of 
the  universe,  of  the  origin  of  life  on  the  earth,  and 
many  other  primitive  ideas  that  stood  as  much  in 
the  way  of  progress  as  negro  slavery. 

The  great  struggle  between  the  Special  Creation- 
ists and  Evolutionists  was  bitter  for  fifteen  to 
twenty  years,  and  no  criticism  of  ridicule  and  sar- 
casm was  too  severe  against  Mr.  Darwin  after  he 
gave  to  the  world  his  great  work  on  the  Origin  of 
Species,  a  work  showing  with  convincing  evidence 
that  all  life  on  the  earth  has  been  evolved  from  the 
lowest  forms.  But  finally  I  have  had  the  satisfac- 
tion as  a  humble  worker  of  seeing  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  accepted  by  nearly  all  the  great  thinkers 
of  the  world  and  used  as  a  basis  for  nearly  all  scien- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  3 

tific  work.  The  destruction  of  slavery  and  the 
triumph  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  have  made  a 
new  world  of  thought  in  all  civilized  countries. 

But  scarcely  were  the  shackles  torn  from  the  limbs 
of  the  slaves,  and  the  minds  of  men  emancipated 
from  the  thraldom  of  tradition  and  superstition, 
when  there  appeared  low  down  on  the  social  hori- 
zon a  speck  of  slavery,  the  White  Slavery  of  the 
Unions,  which  has  grown  in  power  for  evil  until  its 
baneful  influence  is  felt  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land  ^nd  until  it  has  become  more 
hateful  and  debasing  to  the  manhood  of  its  victims  in 
many  respects  than  negro  slavery.  The  destruction 
of  this  anomalous  and  injurious  growth  on  our  civil- 
ization, it  seems  to  me  should  engage  the  attention 
of  all  thinking  men  who  love  liberty,  justice,  equal 
rights,  and  a  stable  government  that  gives  equal 
protection  to  all.  It  seems  that  in  the  early  history 
of  this  disloyal  organization  its  aims  and  purposes 
were  honorable,  lawful  and  beneficial  to  its  mem- 
bers without  any  intention  of  trespassing  upon  or 
interfering  with  the  rights  and  privileges  of  others 
outside  its  ranks.  But  gradually  corrupt,  scheming 
men  got  control  of  labor  organizations  to  use  them 
for  satisfying  their  own  selfish  greed  for  gain  and 
ambition  for  power,  without  any  regard  to  the  rights 
of  all  others  outside  their  ranks. 

As  nearly  every  body  in  this  country  is  a  worker, 
mental  or  physical,  the  early  aggressions  of  organ- 
ized labor  upon  employers  and  independent  workers, 
and  those  outside  its  ranks,  were  looked  upon  by; 


4  THE  WHITE  SLAVEKY 

the  public  in  a  spirit  of  toleration  and  leniency, 
which  seemed  to  impress  the  evil  doers,  the  violaters 
of  the  laws,  with  the  idea  that  they  were  an  excepted 
class,  a  class  having  special  privileges  and  not  amen- 
able to  law  like  other  men.  Corrupt,  scheming  men 
having  got  complete  control  of  labor  organizations, 
they  were  not  slow  to  take  advantage  of  the  tend- 
ency of  the  public  to  tolerate  and  half  excuse  the 
violent  and  lawless  conduct  of  men  in  the  name  of 
union  labor,  and  have  gradually  pushed  their  de- 
mands and  exactions  to  the  utmost  limits  that  com- 
munities will  stand,  and  now  go  before  the  Congress 
and  State  legislatures  demanding  that  labor  organ- 
izations be  an  excepted  class,  a  class  having  special 
privileges,  and  immune  from  prosecution  and  punish- 
ment for  violations  of  the  laws. 

As  far  as  we  are  able  to  see,  those  who  control  and 
direct  the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions,  or 
more  appropriately,  the  league  of  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness,  are  conducting  a  constant  guerilla  war 
on  the  industrial  activities  of  the  country,  without 
disclosing  any  hint  of  their  ultimate  object,  their 
ulimate  ideal,  the  ideal  conditions  they  hope  will 
be  brought  about  by  the  complete  triumph  of 
unionism.  They  demand  special  privileges  and  im- 
munities to  hold  up  employers  to  satisfy  their  selfish 
greed,  and  to  intimidate,  assault  and  murder,  all  out- 
side the  ranks  of  their  organization  who  stand  in 
the  way  of  their  complete  triumph;  but  if  they 
should  succeed  in  getting  the  country  completely  by 
the  throat  so  that  they  would  have  nothing  further 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  5 

to  feed  upon,  no  one  to  further  hold  up,  they  do  not 
tell  us  what  they  would  then  do.  They  do  not  tell 
us  that  they  want  everybody  to  join  the  union,  or 
that  they  even  want  all  men  who  work  with  their 
hands  to  join  it.  They  could  not  want  all  employers 
to  join  it,  for  if  they  did  they  would  have  no  one 
to  hold  up  to  satisfy  their  selfish  greed,  and  they 
could  not  want  all  independent  workers  to  join  it, 
for  if  they  did  they  would  have  no  one  to  make  war 
upon  for  wishing  to  work  without  their  permission 
and  paying  them  a  heavy  toll  for  the  permission, 
and  against  whom  as  individuals  they  could  send 
out  two  to  a  dozen  of  their  thugs  and  sluggers  to 
drive  from  their  work,  assault  and  chase  and  beat 
to  death.  They  could  not  want  all  workers  to  join 
the  unions,  for  if  they  did  they  know  that  the  labor 
trust  could  not  force  up  wages  beyond  their  normal 
level.  They  know  that  they  would  lose  their  jobs 
at  once  and  that  the  unions  would  go  out  of  business, 
if  there  were  not  employers  against  whom  to  hatch 
up  grievances  and  hold  up  to  satisfy  their  selfish 
greed,  and  if  there  were  not  ten  times  as  many  inde- 
pendent workers  as  organized  workers  against  whom 
they  must  wage  constant  war  in  order  that  they 
may  secure  a  monopoly  of  labor,  in  order  that  they 
may  get  for  the  one-tenth  what  all  should  have. 
They  must  know  that  their  entire  scheme  is  preda- 
tory, as  predatory  as  the  operations  of  the  guerilla 
bandit  who  lives  by  raiding  and  holding  up  for  sel- 
fish gain  the  men  who  have  saved  up  the  means  of 
happiness  for  themselves  and  families  by  honest  toil. 


6  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

They  must  know  too,  that  their  jobs  are  dependent 
upon  maintaining  the  organization  of  the  unions, 
which  in  turn  depends  upon  the  teachings  of  the 
league  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness. 

They  must  know  that  the  principles  and  policies 
of  the  unions  are  destructive  of  social  order  and 
industrial  freedom  and  progress,  and  if  they  do 
know  it,  it  is  proof  that  they  care  nothing  for  the  pub- 
lic interest  so  long  as  their  selfish  greed  for  pelf  and 
power  is  satisfied.  In  many  ways  they  have  shown 
that  they  are  utterly  indifferent  to  the  common  wel- 
fare, as  indifferent  as  an  army  of  aliens,  who,  having 
over  run  and  subdued  the  country,  live  in  it  for  the 
spoils  of  successful  war.  They  oppose  an  efficient 
army  and  navy  and  the  organization  and  equipment 
of  the  militia  of  the  several  States  to  protect  the 
country  in  case  of  foreign  war,  or  internal  disturb- 
ance. They  denounce  the  militia,  and  persuade 
young  men  from  joining  it,  and  discharge  any  of 
their  own  members  of  the  unions  who  join  it,  claim- 
ing that  the  militia  should  not  be  called  out  to  main- 
tain order  when  they  send  out  their  thugs  and  slug- 
gers and  educational  committees  to  assault  and  mur- 
der innocent  men,  women  and  children,  destroy  prop- 
erty, strip  women  naked  and  beat  them  for  riding 
on  street  cars,  as  they  did  in  St.  Louis,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enforcing  their  oppressive  and  brutal  de- 
mands against  employers.  They  vehemently  de- 
nounce the  capitalistic  trusts,  apparently  unconscious 
of  the  fact  that  they  control  and  direct  the  prin- 
ciples, policies  and  conduct  of  the  most  oppressive 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  7 

and  tyrannical  trust,  the  labor  trust,  the  world  has 
ever  known.  They  chuckle  with  fiendish  delight 
and  boastful  swagger  when  they  are  able  to  boycott 
and  destroy  the  business  of  men  who  have  furnished 
employment  for  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of 
their  own  people  of  the  unions,  when  these  business 
men  have  incurred  their  displeasure  by  insisting  on 
having  something  to  say  in  the  managing  of  their 
own  business.  They  have  talked  about  "grinding 
toil"  and  "sweat  shops"  of  laboring  men  as  if  they 
were  forced  by  employers  to  work  under  the  lash, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  were  snatching  the 
wages  from  the  hands  of  these  laboring  men  before 
the  wages  could  be  used  to  buy  food,  clothing  and 
comforts  for  their  wives  and  children,  which  were 
required  to  prevent  them  from  suffering.  They 
talk  glowingly  of  what  they  have  done  for  the  labor- 
ing man,  and  yet  require  every  laboring  man  to  pay 
them  a  heavy  toll  for  permission  to  work,  and  take 
a  lien  on  his  wages  while  he  is  permitted  to  work. 
They  have  loudly  denounced  our  courts  for  issuing 
writs  of  injunction  to  restrain  them  and  their  fellow 
thugs  and  sluggers  from  destroying  property  of 
employers  and  intimidating,  assaulting  and  murder- 
ing independent  workers,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that 
they  have  for  years  been  constantly  issuing  injunc- 
tions to  their  followers,  inciting  them  to  destroy  prop- 
erty and  intimidate  and  assault  independent  workers 
and  all  others  who  dare  to  stand  in  their  way  of 
enforcing  their  brutal  demands.  They  talk  glibly 
about  the  rights  of  organized  labor  while  totally 


8  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

ignoring  the  right  to  industrial  freedom  of  independ- 
ent labor  which  they  know  is  ten  times  as  numerous 
as  organized  labor.  They  have  used  the  weak- 
minded  and  vicious  to  drive  many  worthy  men  into 
the  ranks  of  the  unions,  thus  using  the  membership 
of  the  organization  to  do  their  bidding  as  completely 
as  if  they  were  slaves.  They  have,  by  enforcing  the 
principles  and  policies  of  the  unions,  and  by  their 
system  of  increasing  the  inefficiency  of  union  labor 
caused  a  day's  work  to  cost  twice  as  much  as  it  cost 
a  few  years  ago,  thus  doubling  the  prices  of  nearly 
all  commodities  and  the  cost  of  living.  They  have, 
by  enforcing  the  principles  and  policies  of  the  organ- 
ization, encouraged  dead  beating,  making  work,  "sol- 
diering "  and  slouchy  work,  until  there  is  no  longer 
any  stimulus  for  competent  members  to  excel  in 
efficiency,  and  give  their  employer  an  honest  day's 
work  for  honest  day's  pay.  They  have  by  enforcing 
the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions,  instilled 
into  the  minds  of  the  members  the  false  and  per- 
nicious idea  that  they  and  their  employers  are  nat- 
ural enemies,  thus  making  it  impossible  for  union 
labor  to  ever  become  efficient  labor,  for  no  man  who 
regards  another  as  his  enemy  will  exert  himself  to 
give  that  enemy  the  full  efficiency  of  his  labor.  They 
have  by  rigid  enforcement  of  the  principles  and  pol- 
icies of  the  unions,  which  they  control  and  direct,  re- 
stricted apprenticeships  in  the  different  trades  to 
such  small  numbers,  that  thousands  of  young  men 
have  been  driven  into  criminal  and  wasted  lives. 
They  have  directed  the  principles  and  policies  of 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  9 

the  unions  in  such  manner  as  to  crush  the  manhood 
and  enslave  the  minds  of  members  so  that  they  dare 
not  assert  their  natural  and  inalienable  rights  to  edu- 
cate and  prepare  their  sons  for  the  business  or  pro- 
fessions they  think  most  suitable  for  them.  They 
have  wickedly  and  corruptly  endeavored  to  coerce 
national  conventions  to  put  planks  in  their  platforms 
promising  to  enact  laws  giving  to  labor  organizations 
special  privileges  to  commit  crimes,  and  special  im- 
munities from  prosecution  and  punishment  for  the 
commission  of  such  crimes  as  the  destruction  of 
property,  intimidation  and  murder  of  independent 
workers,  by  threatening  to  mass  the  labor  vote,  as 
if  they  owned  it,  against  the  party  that  dares  to 
refuse  compliance  with  their  unjust  and  unlawful 
demands.  They  have  wickedly  and  corruptly  en- 
deavored to  coerce  municipal  and  state  authorities 
into  giving  all  public  work  to  union  labor  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  all  free  and  independent  labor  competing 
for  such  work  which  they  know  is  ten  times  as  num- 
erous. They  have  wickedly  and  corruptly  squeezed 
out  of  and  appropriated  the  wages  of  the  poorest 
class  of  men  in  this  country,  to  satisfy  their  own 
selfish  greed  in  luxurious  living  and  to  exploit  their 
importance,  with  utter  indifference  to  the  sufferings 
and  hardships  and  the  want  of  proper  food  and 
clothing  and  comforts  of  the  families  of  the  men 
whom  they  have  shamefully  robbed  of  their  wages. 
They  have  by  wicked  and  corrupt  methods  and  usur- 
pations of  power,  made  the  unions  a  league  of  envy, 
hate  and  selfishness,  where  weak-minded  men  are  fed 


10  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

on  thoughts  of  prejudice  and  hatred  of  fellow  men, 
and  of  the  government  and  the  flag  that  protects 
them,  and  where  men  of  intelligence  and  good  inten- 
tions are  coerced  into  evil  associations  and  to  tacitly 
sanction  the  many  misdeeds  of  organized  labor,  if 
not  indeed  in  many  instances  to  assist  in  them.  They 
have  by  their  constant  war  on  the  business  interests 
of  the  country  prevented  the  investment  of  hundreds 
of  millions  of  dollars  of  capital,  which  careful  bus- 
iness men  would  naturally  hesitate  to  invest  in  any 
business  enterprise  without  reasonable  assurance 
that  their  business  would  not  be  interrupted  or  inter- 
ferred  with  by  the  unions,  thus  depriving  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  laboring  people,  including  organized 
labor,  of  employment  and  of  earning  hundreds  of 
millions  of  dollars  every  year,  which  honest  toil 
would  have  brought  them.  They  have  by  their  sel- 
fishness and  greed  and  pigheadedness,  refused  to 
see  that  capital  is  always  timid  and  not  likely  to  be 
invested  where  labor  conditions  threaten  to  make 
investment  unprofitable  or  unsafe.  They  have  by 
their  attacks  on  the  courts,  and  their  whining  im- 
portunities and  demands  on  Congress  and  the  state 
legislatures  for  the  enactment  of  laws  giving  to 
labor  organizations  special  privileges  to  destroy  the 
business  and  prosperity  of  communities  and  indi- 
viduals, developed  a  feeling  of  insecurity  in  the 
minds  of  all  men  having  money  for  investment  in 
business  enterprises,  brought  about  a  business  de- 
pression national  in  extent,  a  business  depression 
that  has  thrown  hundreds  of  thousands  of  laboring 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  11 

people  out  of  employment  and  causing  untold  misery 
and  suffering.  They  seem  unable  to  see  in  their 
wickedness  and  stupidity  that  when  they  destroy  the 
business  of  communities  or  individuals,  which  they 
boast  of  with  fiendish  delight,  that  they  are  pulling 
down  the  temple  of  bread  and  butter  upon  the  heads 
of  their  own  followers,  causing  them  the  anguish  and 
suffering  which  nearly  always  results  from  persistent 
wrong  and  injustice.  They  do  not  seem  to  have  the 
judgment  to  see  that  a  careful  business  man  will  take 
into  account  all  the  factors  which  will  probably  make 
his  proposed  business  enterprise  profitable  or  un- 
profitable, before  investing  his  money,  and  that  if 
any  given  proposition  is  clouded  with  doubt  as  to 
its  desirability,  he  will  seek  other  fields  for  his 
investment.  They  have  shown  by  their  indifference 
to  the  common  welfare,  and  by  their  persistent  efforts 
to  destroy  the  business  of  communities  and  of  in- 
dividuals, that  they  care  nothing  for  the  happiness 
and  well-being  of  the  working  members  so  long  as 
they  are  able  to  squeeze  out  of  them  enough  to  keep 
up  their  own  fat  salaries,  and  to  have  enough  in  the 
treasury  of  the  organization  to  enable  them  to  make 
a  display  of  their  power  and  importance  at  political 
conventions  when  offering  for  sale  the  votes  they 
pretend  to  control.  They  have  done  more  to  de- 
velop a  criminal  class  in  this  country,  by  instigat- 
ing their  followers  to  lawlessness  and  crime,  and  by 
calling  to  their  assistance  in  times  of  strikes,  as  sym- 
pathizers, the  violent,  the  vicious  and  the  weak- 
minded,  than  all  other  causes,  not  even  excepting  the 


12  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

sale  and  use  of  intoxicating  liquors.  They  are  doing 
more  to  weaken  and  destroy  the  ties  that  should 
be  strengthened,  to  bind  our  people  together  in  com- 
mon fellowship  and  interests,  by  their  teachings  of 
hate  for  everything  essential  to  our  civilization, 
than  all  other  causes.  They  have  set  up  a  govern- 
ment which  they  call  The  Federation  of  Labor,  within 
the  General  Government  of  the  people,  and  claim 
for  it  an  allegiance  and  authority,  paramount  to  the 
authority  of  the  people's  government,  and  have  made 
laws  and  decrees  nullifying  and  setting  aside  the 
laws  enacted  by  the  people's  representatives.  They 
have  in  their  high  handed  treason,  spit  upon  the  flag 
and  trampled  upon  the  Constitution  of  the  people's 
Government,  and  are  endeavoring  in  their  teachings 
of  hate  and  crime,  to  weaken  the  effectiveness  of  that 
Government  by  dissolving  the  ties  that  should  bind 
the  citizens  together  in  common  fellowship  and 
interests.  They  discourse  eloquently  and  with  as- 
sumed wisdom,  about  economics,  when  denouncing 
the  judges  of  our  courts  for  being  unable  to  see  any 
difference  between  labor  union  thugs  and  any  other 
class  of  citizen  malefactors,  and  yet  show  by  their 
expressions  that  their  philosophy  of  economics  is 
dressed  in  the  swaddling  clothes  'of  very  primitive 
times.  In  their  ideas  of  liberty  to  speak  and  write 
and  act,  they  seem  unconscious  of  the  fact  that  every 
man's  liberty  to  swing  his  arms,  ends  where  another 
man's  nose  begins,  and  that  every  man's  liberty  to 
speak  or  write,  ends  where  it  commences  to  injure 
another  in  the  exercise  of  his  lawful  pursuits. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  13 

We  do  not  see  how  any  man  capable  of  reasoning 
and  who  is  familiar  with  the  history  of  unionism 
in  this  country  for  the  last  thirty-five  years,  can 
come  to  any  other  conclusion  than  that  it  has  been 
one  of  the  greatest  evils  of  our  country,  greater 
than  the  use  of  intoxicating  liquors  and  opium. 

We  believe  that  thinking  men  are  beginning  to 
wake  up  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  this  union 
slavery  must  not  only  be  checked,  but  destroyed,  or 
it  will  destroy  the  liberties  of  those  who  value  lib- 
erty and  independence  as  the  most  precious  gift  of 
our  civilization,  a  gift  not  to  be  surrendered,  a  gift 
that  freemen  regard  as  sacred  as  life  itself,  a  gift 
sanctified  by  the  blood  of  heroes  in  the  war  of  the 
Revolution  for  the  establishment  of  our  government, 
and  in  the  Civil  War  for  the  preservation  of  the 
union  and  the  abolition  of  African  slavery.  We  be- 
lieve that  this  union  slavery  can  be  destroyed  with- 
out bloody  conflict,  by  the  thorough  organization 
of  all  our  people  who  believe  in  orderly  government, 
individual  liberty,  independence  and  equal  rights, 
seeing  to  it  that  there  shall  be  no  excepted  class,  no 
class  of  special  privileges  and  immunities,  but  that 
all  shall  obey  the  laws  made  for  the  equal  protection 
of  all  in  the  exercise  of  their  equal  rights  to  life,  lib- 
erty and  property. 

Think  of  the  enormous  loss  of  human  life  and  of 
injured  persons  every  year,  caused  by  the  union 
slaves  trained  in  the  league  of  envy,  hate  and  crime, 
wrecking  passenger  trains,  dynamiting  street  cars, 
bridges,  buildings  and  mines,  and  slugging,  assault- 


14  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ing  and  murdering  innocent  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren by  scores ;  and  we  have  brought  home  to  us  the 
need  of  checking  the  fiendish  operations  of  the  great- 
est criminal  organiation  that  ever  existed.  Think  of 
the  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  in  losses  to  the 
business  interests  of  the  country  every  year,  caused 
by  the  union  slaves  trained  in  the  league  of  envy, 
hate  and  selfishness,  using  dynamite  and  the  torch  in 
the  destruction  of  property,  and  in  using  the  strike, 
picketing,  boycott,  slugging  and  riot  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  business,  and  we  are  impressed  with  the  still 
further  need  of  checking  the  tendency  towards  social 
dissolution  which  the  criminal  phase  of  unionism 
is  causing.  Think  of  the  millions  of  dollars  of  losses 
in  wages  to  organized  labor  every  year,  on  account 
of  strikes  ordered  by  the  masters  who  never  strike 
or  never  sweat,  to  enforce  oppressive  demands  with 
which  no  self-respecting  employer  could  comply 
without  loss  of  his  independence  and  freedom.  Think 
of  the  other  millions  of  dollars  of  losses  in  wages  to 
organized  labor  every  year  on  account  of  the  mem- 
bers being  robbed  of  their  wages  by  the  masters  who 
make  a  swarm  of  drones  under  the  names  of  organ- 
izers, walking  delegates,  business  agents  and  staffs, 
all  parasites  of  the  unions  who  must  be  fed  and 
nourished  in  great  style  from  the  wages  of  the  mem- 
bers before  the  families  of  the  members  get  the  pit- 
tance of  the  wages  left  them,  thus  causing  them  great 
suffering  and  hardships.  Think  of  it  whether  the 
negro  slaves  were  more  thoroughly  bound  and 
gagged  and  deprived  of  their  liberty  and  the  wages 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  15 

of  their  toil,  than  are  the  members  of  the  unions 
deprived  of  their  liberty  and  their  wages,  by  the 
masters,  who  like  all  other  parasites,  absorb  the  life- 
giving  substances  of  their  hosts. 

If  a  true  picture  could  be  drawn  showing  the 
sufferings  and  hardships  of  the  families  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  unions,  by  being  deprived  of  proper  food 
and  clothing  and  comforts  by  the  masters  taking 
from  them  and  causing  the  loss  of  wages  to  the  heads 
of  these  families,  it  would  probably  startle  the  coun- 
try as  to  the  enormity  of  the  evil  and  wickedness 
of  present-day  unionism.  It  would  doubtless  be  con- 
vincing evidence  to  the  unprejudiced  mind  that 
those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  organization  have  worked  up  an  elab- 
orate scheme  under  the  name  of  union  labor,  for 
extorting  from  unthinking  and  weak-minded  mem- 
bers, their  wages  to  swell  the  pockets  and  the  pride 
of  selfish,  greedy  masters.  They  have  with  supreme 
impudence  and  audacity  unknown  to  all  business 
outside  of  bandits  and  pirates,  made  laws  forbidding 
all  men  outside  the  unions  from  engaging  in  trades 
which  they  claim  to  control,  and  heavily  fine  any  of 
their  own  members  who  do  more  than  a  certain 
amount  of  work  in  a  day.  And  they  have  made  laws 
to  compel  employers  to  employ  union  bosses  of  union 
choosing,  to  lay  out  work  for  his  union  employees, — 
in  short  they  have  made  laws  taking  charge  of  the 
business  of  employers,  and  directing  them  how  to 
conduct  it,  leaving  an  employer  no  freedom  in  the 
matter  except  to  pay  the  bills.  This  is  closed  shop 


16  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

unionism,  and  the  employer  who  does  not  meekly  sub- 
mit to  it,  must  have  his  business  destroyed  by  boycott 
as  an  example  and  warning  to  other  employers  who 
might  otherwise  have  the  temerity  to  oppose  their 
judgment  to  the  commands  of  the  reckless  masters 
who  refuse  to  consider  the  interests  of  all  the  people. 
Every  liberty-loving  man,  every  man  who  loves 
orderly  government  founded  on  principles  which 
give  equal  protection  to  all  in  the  exercise  of  their 
inalienable  rights,  must  hate  and  loathe  an  organiza- 
tion whose  principles  and  policies  as  controlled  and 
directed  by  the  masters  are  so  oppressive  to  all  out- 
side its  ranks.  These  masters  would  have  the  ineffi- 
cient profit  by  their  inefficiency,  and  the  efficient  suf- 
fer on  account  of  their  efficiency;  that  is,  they  pro- 
pose like  socialists  to  take  the  savings  of  the  industri- 
ous and  provident  man  and  give  them  to  the  indolent 
and  improvident  man ;  to  pull  efficiency  down  to  the 
level  of  inefficiency ;  whereas  in  the  course  of  evolu- 
tion of  life  the  efficient  have  profited  by  their  effi- 
ciency, and  the  inefficient  lost  out  by  their  inefficiency. 
In  no  other  way  could  there  have  been  evolution  or 
progress,  and  in  no  other  way  can  there  be  continued 
improvement  in  the  race.  In  every  race  of  animals, 
including  our  own,  there  are  individual  extremes 
from  the  most  vigorous  to  the  least  vigorous,  from 
the  most  perfect  to  the  least  perfect.  And  there  is 
a  constant  tendency  in  all  forms  of  life  to  eliminate 
or  weed  out  the  least  vigorous  and  inefficient,  and  to 
the  preservation  of  the  most  efficient  and  vigorous 
in  the  struggle  for  existence. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  17 

Intellectual  and  moral  development  however,  do 
not  go  on  pari  passu,  as  could  be  shown  by  many  il- 
lustrations from  Lord  Bacon  down  to  our  own  day. 
Men  of  the  highest  intellectual  attainments  are  fre- 
quently very  deficient  in  ethical  conceptions,  and 
men  not  intellectually  bright  frequently  have  a  fine 
sense  of  moral  rectitude.  Perhaps  a  vast  majority  of 
our  people  who  fall  below  average  intelligence,  have 
no  developed  ethical  conceptions,  or  conceptions  of 
right  living,  and  easily  become  victims  or  followers 
of  men  who  have  above  average  intelligence,  but 
who  have  practically  no  moral  sense.  There  is 
always  a  rich  field  for  the  intelligent,  scheming 
and  unprincipled  man  who  is  without  developed 
ethical  conceptions  to  lead  astray  the  thoughtless, 
indifferent,  easy  going  and  less  intelligent  class  of 
our  people,  under  the  pretext  of  wishing  to  better 
their  condition.  It  is  in  this  field  of  the  less  intelli- 
gent and  more  unfortunate  class  of  our  people,  and 
of  the  least  force  of  character  that  the  labor  agitator 
finds  easy  victims  to  his  schemes  of  bettering  his 
condition. 

While  labor  leaders  make  demands  on  Congress  in 
the  name  of  organized  labor  constituencies,  the  de- 
mands are  really  not  the  demands  of  labor  constitu- 
encies any  more  than  were  the  proposed  measures  of 
Southern  Congressmen,  the  measures  demanded  by 
their  negro  constituencies.  We  think  it  a  safe  propo- 
sition to  state  that  the  principles  and  policies  of  any 
organization  that  tends  to  make  employers  and  em- 
ployees enemies,  or  that  tends  to  prevent  friendly  re- 


18  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

lations  between  them,  are  vicious  and  deserve  the 
stamp  of  disapproval  of  all  honest  and  fair-minded 
men.  There  is  one  test  by  which  laboring  men  may 
determine  whether  the  proponents  of  labor  schemes 
are  honest,  and  that  is  whether  the  scheme  will  in 
any  manner  extort  from  the  laboring  man  any  part 
of  his  wages.  If  it  does  he  may  know  that  the  pro- 
ponent of  the  scheme  is  not  honest  and  only  wishes  to 
use  the  laboring  man  for  what  he  can  get  out  of  him. 
We  believe  that  there  is  a  useful  field  for  unionism 
as  soon  as  it  drops  its  present  militant,  coercive  and 
destructive  features  and  pays  more  attention  to  the 
altruistic  side  of  life,  and  reeognizes  that  others  out- 
side its  ranks  have  rights  which  should  be  respected. 
There  can  be  no  valid  objection  to  men  of  the  same 
business  or  profession  forming  guilds  or  associations 
for  their  mutual  pleasure  and  benefit  in  many  direc- 
tions. In  all  the  transformations  of  matter  there  is 
a  tendency  of  like  units  to  segregate  or  drift  to- 
gether, and  of  unlike  units  to  separate.  This  law  of 
segregation  is  as  true  of  the  units  of  the  social  aggre- 
gate as  of  the  units  of  any  other  forms  of  matter. 
This  segregation  or  drifting  together  of  the  mem- 
bers of  particular  trades  or  professions  may  be  bene- 
ficial to  each  in  many  ways  without  any  aggressive 
or  militant  feature  leading  them  to  wish  for  the 
destruction  of  those  of  the  same  trade  or  profession 
who  do  not  wish  to  join  them,  or  without  wishing  to 
interfere  with  others  in  the  exercise  of  their  equal 
rights.  The  social  feature  and  the  exchange  of  ideas 
along  lines  with  which  all  are  more  or  less  familiar, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  19 

must  naturally  be  a  powerful  incentive  in  drawing 
men  of  the  same  business  or  profession  together. 

We  believe  that  closed  shop  unionism  has  already 
reached  high-water  mark,  and  that  it  must  hence- 
forth gradually  recede  until  it  will  no  longer  be 
a  menace  to  the  country  and  to  the  liberty  of  those 
outside  its  ranks.  Its  constant  invasion  of  the  rights 
of  all  outside  its  ranks,  has  as  a  matter  of  self- 
defence  brought  into  existence  the  organization  of 
the  industrial  and  business  interests  of  the  country, 
which  have  already  had  the  salutary  influence  of 
checking  its  oppressions  and  pretentions,  and  of 
sobering  its  conduct  in  many  ways.  When  labor 
organizations  place  themselves  upon  the  footing  of 
non-interference  with  the  rights  of  others,  like  medi- 
cal associations,  bankers  associations,  etc.,  they  will 
find  no  more  opposition  to  their  existence  than  these 
beneficial  organizations  find  to  their  existence. 

The  constant  aggressions  and  over-riding  conduct 
of  organized  labor  have  gradually  become  so  intol- 
erable that  the  employers  of  such  labor  have  after 
insufferable  annoyances  and  enormous  losses  by 
strikes  and  destruction  of  property  and  various  kinds 
of  interferences,  been  obliged  to  go  into  counter  or- 
ganizations for  defence.  If  the  employers  of  union 
labor  had  entered  into  defensive  organizations  years 
ago,  the  labor  organizations  would  have  been  less 
oppressive  in  their  demands  and  conduct,  and  would 
have  entailed  less  losses  on  the  country  every  year. 
A  thorough  organization  of  the  employers  of  union 
labor  and  of  independent  labor,  could  completely 


20  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

check  the  aggressive  acts  of  labor  leaders  so  that 
a  unionist  could  not  get  employment  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  employers'  association.  Employers  are 
beginning  to  appreciate  the  strength  that  organiza- 
tion gives  them,  and  the  open  shop  movement  indi- 
cates that  they  are  not  inclined  to  further  tolerate 
the  oppressive  demands,  exactions  and  humiliations 
labor  leaders  have  been  in  the  habit  of  imposing  * 
upon  them  when  they  had  no  defensive  organization, 
and  when  an  employer  standing  alone  had  the  entire 
weight  of  labor  organizations  directed  against  him 
to  crush  and  ruin  him,  if  he  dared  to  incur  their  dis- 
pleasure. The  growing  inefficiency  of  union  labor, 
due  to  the  teachings  of  those  who  control  and  direct 
the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions  in  ignoring 
merit,  is  becoming  a  powerful  factor  in  weakening 
its  hold  on  employers,  and  must  become  a  more  and 
more  discriminating  feature  against  using  such  labor. 
It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  some  of  the  unions  not 
affiliated  with  the  American  Federation  of  Labor, 
allow  an  amount  of  individual  freedom  of  their  mem- 
bers consistent  with  the  legal  purposes  of  organized 
labor  and  with  an  enlightened  public  conscience,  and 
the  criticisms  of  this  work  do  not  apply  to  these  lib- 
eral labor  organizations  showing  such  sanity.  For 
a  number  of  years  the  Brotherhood  of  Locomotive 
Engineers,  Railway  Conductors  and  Stationary  Engi- 
neers, have  shown  by  their  conduct  in  recognizing 
the  rights  of  competitors,  employers  and  the  public, 
that  organized  labor  is  not  necessarily  antagonistic 
to  the  common  welfare. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  21 

There  are  many  facts  tending  to  show  that  those 
labor  organizations  having  men  of  brains  and  stand- 
ing to  guide  them  are  coming  to  see  the  folly,  and 
even  wickedness  of  preaching  a  doctrine  of  hate  and 
mistrust  of  employees  for  employers,  and  a  doctrine 
that  forbids  honest  working  men  from  working  for 
whom  and  under  such  conditions  as  may  suit  them 
without  paying  labor  leaders  a  heavy  toll  for  the  per- 
mission. Even  the  Knights  of  Labor,  an  organiza- 
tion which  at  one  time  was  almost  as  intolerant  of 
the  equal  rights  of  all  outside  their  membership  to 
industrial  and  commercial  freedom,  as  the  unions 
affiliated  with  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  are 
now,  under  sane,  progressive  leaders,  showing  a  tol- 
eration and  respect  for  the  equal  rights  of  those  out- 
side their  organization,  worthy  of  commendation. 

Those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  of  the 
unions,  have,  by  their  unlawful  combinations  for  the 
purpose  of  securing  and  controlling  a  monopoly  of 
labor  for  their  organization,  gradually  increased  the 
army  of  the  unemployed  in  this  country,  until  we  are 
rapidly  approaching  a  condition  in  which  we  shall 
have  as  much  trouble  to  provide  for  our  unemployed 
as  some  of  the  union-ridden  countries  of  Europe. 
Any  one  capable  of  reasoning  has  only  to  look  at  the 
facts  to  see  that  the  unions  are  responsible  for  the 
increasing  army  of  our  unemployed.  If  there  are 
only  so  many  millions  of  dollars  available  for  the 
payment  of  wages  in  this  country  every  year,  and 
one-tenth  of  the  wage-earning  classes  organize  as  a 
trust  as  the  unions  have  done,  to  secure  all,  or  a 


22  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

monopoly  of  this  common  wage  fund,  a  large  part 
of  the  nine-tenths  of  the  wage  earners  who  are  not 
organized,  will  be  unable  to  secure  employment  and 
their  proportion  of  the  wage  fund.  The  greedy  union 
officials,  who  are  parasites  of  organized  labor,  do 
not  want  all  the  wage  earners  in  the  unions,  for  if 
they  were  and  the  wage  fund  was  divided  equally 
among  them  according  to  merit,  the  officials  know 
that  the  one-tenth  could  not  secure  besides  their  own 
share  of  the  wage  fund,  all  that  the  nine-tenths  would 
be  entitled  to. 

We  hear  the  proponents  of  unionism  triumphantly 
exclaiming,  "you  would  lower  the  wages  of  the  labor- 
ing man  would  you,"  as  if  organized  labor  was  the 
only  labor  that  has  any  rights.  We  reply  that  we 
would  give  every  man  a  chance  to  win  or  secure  his 
part  of  the  common  wage  fund,  and  if  giving  him 
that  chance  lowered  wages,  we  know  that  it  would 
lower  the  price  of  everything  that  he  uses  in  the 
same  proportion,  so  that  he  would  be  able  to  then  buy 
as  many  necessaries  and  luxuries  on  one  dollar  a  day 
as  he  now  buys  on  five  dollars  a  day,  with  five  times 
as  many  men  working.  What  we  want  is  a  system 
of  fairness  that  will  give  every  man  a  chance  to 
secure  his  part  of  the  common  wage  fund,,  according 
to  his  merit,  without  any  favoritism,  intimidation 
and  without  having  to  pay  heavy  toll  to  any  labor 
parasite  for  permission  to  work. 

Up  to  a  few  years  ago  the  farmers  of  this  country 
bred  horned  cattle  and  put  up  hay  in  stacks  or  ricks 
in  their  meadows,  so  that  quite  a  herd  could  feed 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  23 

around  the  rick  or  stack  in  severe  weather,  and  by 
standing  close  together,  protect  each  other  from  the 
storms.  But  on  account  of  the  more  pugnacious 
animals  horning  others,  the  weaker  and  peaceable 
part  of  the  herd  was  not  only  prevented  from  feed- 
ing, but  from  fear  were  kept  away  from  the  hay  rick, 
shivering  and  suffering  from  cold  and  hunger.  Later 
the  farmers  took  to  dehorning  their  cattle  and  rais- 
ing breeds  without  horns,  and  found  that  the  de- 
horned cattle  and  muleys  fed  from  the  same  hay-rick 
without  fighting,  each  getting  his  share  of  hay  and 
all  affording  protection  to  each  from  the  stress  of 
severe  weather. 

Now  if  the  unions  were  dehorned  and  the  fight 
taken  out  and  the  charity  and  docility  left  in  them, 
and  every  man  given  a  chance  to  secure  his  share  of 
the  common  wage  fund,  the  army  of  the  unemployed 
would  be  gradually  reduced  to  a  class  of  men  who 
have  not  sufficient  force  of  character  to  provide  for 
themselves,  a  class  of  men  we  shall  always  have  with 
us,  but  whose  numbers  must  be  gradually  reduced 
by  preventing  their  multiplication  by  wise  and  hu- 
mane laws. 

We  recognize  that  the  unions  furnish  their  propor- 
tion of  the  wage  fund,  for  the  members  are  obliged 
to  have  the  services  of  physicians,  lawyers,  mer- 
chants, and  directly  or  indirectly  the  services  of  all 
other  classes,  whether  union  or  independent  workers. 


CHAPTER  II. 
CONDITIONS  OF  SLAVERY. 

We  always  mean  by  slavery,  men  restrained  of 
their  liberty,  of  their  independence  and  freedom, 
by  other  men,  no  matter  under  what  form  the  re- 
straint may  exist,  so  that  it  is  not  due  to  criminal 
or  unlawful  conduct.  In  Africa  there  were  up  to 
recent  times  chiefs  who  made  it  their  business  to 
make  raids  with  their  followers  into  the  territory 
of  adjacent  tribes  for  the  purpose  of  capturing  men 
of  their  own  race  and  selling  them  into  slavery. 
There  are  many  instances  of  men  of  feeble  minds 
selling  themselves  for  a  consideration,  and  of  the 
sale  being  recognized  as  legitimate.  In  this  country 
since  the  abolition  of  slavery  there  have  been  a  few 
systematic  attempts  to  restrain  men  of  their  liberty 
by  peonage,  a  form  of  slavery,  which  is  punishable 
under  the  laws  by  fine  and  imprisonment. 

There  seems  to  be  some  even  of  our  own  race,  who 
have  not  grown  out  of  the  savage  state,  who  are 
without  emotions  of  sympathy;  who  have  no  devel- 
oped conceptions  of  equal  rights  and  justice,  and 
who  desire  to  control  for  their  own  profit,  glory  and 
distinction,  the  actions,  the  conduct  and  the  lives 
of  their  fellow  men  whom  they  may  by  any  sort  of 

24 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  25 

promises,  induce  to  surrender  their  independence 
and  freedom.  The  men  who  make  it  their  business 
to  take  advantage  of  the  weaknesses  and  prejudices 
of  their  fellowmen  for  the  purpose  of  using  them 
in  furthering  their  own  schemes  and  to  their  own 
profit,  know  well  how  to  play  upon  their  feelings 
and  prejudices  until  they  are  brought  under  their 
control.  After  the  schemers  get  unsuspecting  men 
thoroughly  into  their  power  they  can  then  play  the 
tyrant  and  master  over  their  victim  as  completely 
as  the  spider  over  the  fly  enmeshed  in  its  web.  The 
labor  leaders  have  developed  their  art  for  entrapping 
and  enslaving  their  victims  to  as  fine  a  point  as  the 
spider  that  weaves  the  web  for  entrapping  its  victim 
for  future  use.  And  once  caught  in  the  toils  of  the 
union,  it  seems  as  difficult  and  hopeless  for  the  vic- 
tim to  escape  as  for  the  fly  to  escape  from  the  meshes 
of  the  spider's  web. 

The  masters  of  negro  slavery  always  stoutly  as- 
serted that  their  slaves  were  better  off  under  slavery 
than  under  freedom  and  independence,  and  as  slaves 
are  never  known  to  rise  and  assert  and  fight  for  their 
freedom,  it  is  evident  that  the  white  slaves  of  the 
union  must  be  given  their  independence  and  free- 
dom by  influences  strongly  opposed  by  their  masters. 
We  have  spoken  of  the  members  of  the  unions  as 
the  slaves  of  a  set  of  men,  who  have  by  unfair  ad- 
vantage secured  control  of  the  organization  and  are 
exploiting  and  manipulating  it  to  their  own  advan- 
tage in  utter  disregard  of  the  rights  and  interests  of 
society  and  the  members  whom  they  have  securely 


26  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

bound  and  enslaved.*     We  cannot  properly  apply 
any  other  term  than  that  of  slaves  to  the  members 


*NoTE.  In  our  study  of  the  present  trades  union  system,  we  have 
ventured  to  refer  to  it  as  a  form  of  slavery,  and  to  show  that  the 
expression  is  not  too  strong,  we  will  quote  from  a  decision  of  Judge 
Phillips  in  the  Amalgamated  Window  Glass  Workers  case,  in  the 
Common  Pleas  Court  of  Cuyahoga  County,  Ohio,  December  27,  1907. 
After  a  thorough  analysis  of  the  By-laws,  which  were  made  a  part  of 
the  petition  asking  for  the  dissolution  of  the  association,  Judge  Phillips 
in  his  decision  says : — 

"  The  By-laws  of  this  association  contain  a  multitude  of  provisions 
.  .  .  that  give  the  organization  absolute  control  of  every  member 
as  a  glass  worker,  and  places  him  in  complete  servility  to  it.  Every 
member  of  this  body  has  surrendered  his  individuality,  and  his  indus- 
trial freedom,  and  is  no  longer  a  personal  factor  in  the  industrial 
world." 

We  quote  from  several  sections  of  the  By-laws  of  the  association 
showing  that  it  places  restrictions  upon  the  industrial  freedom  of  its 
own  members. 

Section  25.  "  No  member  of  Amalgamated  Window  Glass  Workers 
of  America  shall  be  allowed  to  work  at  any  non-union  works.  For 
the  violation  of  this  law,  they  shall  be  subject  to  a  fine  at  the  discre- 
tion of  the  Executive  Board." 

Section  7.  Any  member  signing  an  agreement  of  any  kind  to  secure 
employment,  shall  be  fined  $25.00  for  the  first  offense,  $50.00  for  the 
second  offense,  and  be  suspended  from  membership  for  third  offense." 

Section  20.  No  member  of  this  Association  shall  work  for  monthly 
wages,  unless  it  be  for  guarantee  to  secure  himself  against  loss  or  to 
retain  himself  in  an  undesirable  position." 

We  will  quote  a  section  showing  that  this  association  undertakes 
to  limit  the  industrial  freedom  of  men  outside  its  membership. 

Section  2.  "  No  one  not  a  member  of  the  Amalgamated  Window 
Glass  Workers  of  America  shall  be  allowed  to  work  at  any  of  the 
four  trades,  except  our  own  apprentices." 

We  will  quote  from  the  By-laws  of  the  association,  showing  that 
it  undertakes  to  control  the  commercial  freedom  of  manufacturers 
and  employers  of  labor. 

Section  9.  Every  manufacturer  engaging  member  of  the  Amalga- 
mated Window  Glass  Workers  of  America,  shall  sign  the  agreement  of 
the  association  before  the  members  will  be  allowed  to  work." 

Section  36.  "  Each  manufacturer  shall  be  compelled  to  employ  a 
boss  cutter;  said  boss  cutter  to  be  a  member  of  the  Amalgamated 
Window  Glass  Workers  of  America,  and  he  shall  divide  and  distribute 
the  orders  among  the  cutters." 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  27 

who  have  fallen  under  the  absolute  control  of  the 
union  officials  who  manipulate  and  direct  their  ac- 
tions as  completely  as  were  the  actions  of  the  negro 
slaves  directed  by  their  masters.  We  can  not  prop- 
erly apply  any  other  term  than  that  of  slaves  to  the 
men  who  should  not  be  classed  as  violent,  weak- 
minded  or  vicious,  but  who  have  surrendered  their  in- 
dividuality and  liberty  to  the  union  officials  who  use 
them  with  no  more  consideration  than  the  negro 
slaves  were  used  by  their  masters.  The  members  of 
the  unions,  the  violent,  vicious  and  weak-minded,  and 
those  who  should  not  be  thus  classed  are  obedient 
to  the  orders  of  the  union  officials,  even  when  they 
do  not  approve  of  the  orders  given  them,  the  same 
as  were  the  negro  slaves  of  the  south.  There  is 
evidence  tending  to  show  that  like  slaves,  without 
audible  protest  and  in  fear  and  trembling,  they  allow 
the  union  officials  to  squeeze  and  rob  them  of  the 
earnings  of  their  honest  toil  in  various  ways  for  the 
promotion  of  purposes  which  they  do  not  approve, 
and  with  which  they  do  not  sympathize.  They,  like 
slaves  sit  idle  day  after  day  and  see  the  union  offi- 
cials in  their  names  and  by  their  tacit  approval, 
order  hired  thugs  and  bullies  to  intimidate  and 
assault  independent  workmen  and  insult  their  fam- 
ilies, because  the  independent  workers  have  the  cour- 
age of  free  men  to  exercise  their  inalienable  rights 
to  work  for  whom  arid  on  such  terms  as  suited  them. 
They,  like  slaves,  allow  their  earnings  to  be  taken 
from  them  to  the  detriment  and  suffering  of  their 
families  by  the  selfish,  greedy  masters,  for  the  pur- 


28  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

pose  of  exploiting  the  importance  and  authority  of 
the  masters,  and  for  the  purpose  of  paying  and  de- 
fending criminals  of  the  union  who  had  been  hired 
to  commit  such  atrocious  acts  as  arson,  wrecking 
of  trains,  and  destruction  of  the  property  of  em- 
ployers and  of  independent  workers.  Like  slaves 
the  members  allow  themselves  to  be  used  for  treason- 
able purposes  against  the  peoples  government,  when 
they  obey  the  commands  of  the  masters  who  are 
constantly  showing  themselves  worse  traitors  than 
Benedict  Arnold  by  endeavoring  to  set  up  their 
authority  as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  Gen- 
eral Government,  which,  when  unobstructed  by  trea- 
sonable designs,  throws  the  shield  of  protection 
around  all  without  regard  to  race,  color  or  previous 
condition.  They,  like  slaves  trade  with  those  with 
whom  they  are  ordered  to  trade,  boycott  those  whom 
they  are  ordered  to  boycott,  work  when  they  are 
ordered  to  work;  do  as  little  work  as  possible  when 
ordered  to;  cease  work  when  ordered  to  and 
go  on  strike  without  regard  to  providing  for  the 
necessities  of  their  families,  and  hate  work  like 
slaves  because  they  are  instructed  to  feel  no  interest 
in  it.  All  men  who  feel  that  they  should  not  be 
classed  with  the  weak-minded  and  vicious,  should 
assert  their  individuality  and  freedom  under  all  cir- 
cumstances, always  conceding  to  all  others  equal 
independence  and  freedom,  and  to  constantly  de- 
nounce and  suppress  any  man  or  set  of  men  who 
attempts  to  stand  in  the  way  of  free  men  exercising 
their  inalienable  rights,  and  to  encourage  the  prac- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  29 

tice  of  suppression  until  it  becomes  contagious,  in 
dealing  with  tyrants  who  would  rob  men  of  their 
liberty  and  individuality.  Members  of  the  unions 
are  like  slaves  when  they  are  made  to  regard  the 
destruction  of  property  as  of  no  consequence  to  them 
except  perhaps  as  a  blessing  in  making  more  work 
for  the  union  and  more  fees  for  the  labor  agitator. 
Every  rational  free  man  will,  as  far  as  practicable, 
hear  all  that  may  be  said  on  each  side  of  a  question 
upon  which  men  differ,  before  deciding  the  course 
he  will  take. 

Like  the  negro  slaves,  the  members  are  afraid  to 
strike  for  freedom,  or  attempt  to  break  away  from 
their  masters,  for  fear  that  they  will  be  captured 
and  brought  back  and  unmercifully  punished  by 
being  bucked  and  gagged,  beaten  with  sticks  and 
stones  and  missiles,  eyes  gouged  out,  carbolic  acid 
poured  into  their  mouths,  or  pursued  and  driven 
from  every  job  they  take.  They  should  know  that 
they  are  in  some  respects  subjected  to  more  galling 
slavery  than  the  negro  slaves,  in  this,  that  if  they 
incur  the  displeasure  of  their  masters,  that  the  dis- 
pleasure or  the  curse  of  the  masters  is  visited  upon 
the  families  of  the  offending  members  under  the 
ban  or  curse  of  the  union,  in  such  acts  as  having 
them  insulted  with  vile  epithets  or  threatened  and 
assaulted  and  chased  by  other  members  and  their 
families  and  sympathizers. 

Every  intelligent  and  unprejudiced  mind,  after 
impartial  investigation,  must  concur  in  the  view  that 
the  conduct  of  the  union  officials  towards  the  mem- 


30  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

bers,  is  the  conduct  of  a  master  who  exacts  the  most 
implicit  obedience ;  a  master  who  would  not  tolerate 
from  them  any  intimation  or  insinuation  of  ques- 
tioning his  authority,  and  a  master  who  would  order 
a  punishment  of  thirty-nine  lashes  or  more  put  on 
the  naked  back  of  any  one  who  should  dare  to 
express  a  desire  for  independence  and  freedom,  and 
a  respect  for  the  rights  of  independent  workers. 

The  acts  of  the  members  of  the  unions  are  not  the 
acts  of  sane  men  exercising  their  independence  and 
freedom,  but  the  acts  of  slaves  directed  by  masters 
who  know  no  bounds  to  their  authority  save  the 
patience  of  the  long  suffering  public,  and  who  do 
not  hesitate  at  treason  in  setting  at  defiance  the 
laws  of  the  peoples  government. 

In  times  of  negro  slavery  the  masters  sometimes 
appointed  one  slave  as  a  temporary  boss  over  the 
other  slaves  on  his  plantation,  and  this  temporary 
slave  boss  was  harder  on  those  under  him  than  was 
the  white  overseer.  And  sometimes  the  master 
ordered  two  or  more  of  his  slaves  to  seize  and  bind 
another  and  apply  the  lash  to  his  naked  back  for 
some  offense.  So  the  union  officials  sometimes  ap- 
point a  vicious  working  member,  a  union  slave,  to 
some  minor  position,  perhaps  as  walking  delegate 
or  slugger,  who  does  not  fail  to  show  his  authority 
in  mean  acts  over  other  members  or  slaves  of  the 
union.  And  sometimes  working  members  are  ord- 
ered by  their  union  masters  to  punish  other  members 
for  some  offense,  perhaps  for  expressing  a  desire  for 
independence  and  freedom  or  for  expressing  sympa- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  31 

thy  for  a  free  man  he  has  helped  to  deprive  of  em- 
ployment, and  the  slave  members  assigned  to  the 
work,  do  it  without  questioning,  as  did  the  negro 
slaves  who  obeyed  their  masters.  There  is,  however, 
this  difference  in  favor  of  negro  slavery;  the  union 
slaves  punish  and  persecute  their  brother  members 
who  have  fallen  under  the  ban  or  curse  of  the  union, 
with  a  fierceness,  hatred  .and  cruelty  unknown  to 
the  black  slaves  of  the  South,  who  were  not  taught 
hatred  and  cruelty  to  their  brothers  by  their  white 
masters. 

This  union  slavery  is  becoming  terribly  galling 
to  thousands  of  independent  spirits  who  are  tired 
and  disgusted  of  sinking  their  individuality  and  in- 
dustrial freedom  into  such  a  despotism  of  hatred, 
cruelty,  crime  and  slavery,  having  been  forced  into 
it  in  times  of  strikes  and  turbulence,  when  they  could 
hardly  help  themselves  without  endangering  their 
lives;  when  it  was  worth  a  man's  life  to  oppose  the 
noisy  demonstrations  of  the  weak-minded  and  vi- 
cious, under  the  leadership  of  hireling  labor  agita- 
tors. The  violent  leaders  of  the  unions  with  hearts 
full  of  hatred  to  the  peoples  government,  and  raging 
with  opposition  to  the  independence  and  freedom 
to  the  common  man,  will  not  relinquish  their  slave- 
making  business  until  they  shall  have  been  met 
by  the  forces  of  the  altruisic  and  liberty-loving  part 
of  the  community,  and  defeated  all  along  the  line. 
It  is  certainly  a  slave-making  business  for  the  union 
officials  to  send  out  their  thugs  and  walking  delegates 
to  warn  free  and  independent  citizens  that  they  will 


32  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

not  be  permitted  to  work  on  jobs  which  they  have 
secured,  and  that  if  they  wish  to  work  they  must 
join  the  union  and  pay  monthly  fees  to  keep  up  the 
fat  salaries  of  the  selfish  masters.  Again,  like  slaves, 
the  members  of  the  unions  obey  the  orders  of  their 
masters  and  keep  their  sons  from  learning  appren- 
ticeships in  the  different  trades,  except  by  permis- 
sion of  the  masters,  thus  slavishly  surrendering  their 
natural  rights  to  fit  their  children  for  whatever 
vocation,  business  or  profession  may  seem  most 
advantageous  and  remunerative.  Like  slaves  they 
allow  themselves  to  be  used  for  dishonest  purposes, 
as  not  keeping  faith  with,  or  breaking  of  solemn 
contracts  with  employers  when  ordered  to  do  so  by 
the  masters,  who  are  lacking  of  a  sense  of  charity 
and  fraternity  in  their  dealings  with  their  fellow 
men.  Like  slaves  who  fear  the  displeasure  of  their 
masters,  they  protect  criminals  of  the  unions  whom 
they  know  of  being  guilty  of  the  blackest  crimes, 
by  not  reporting  them  to  the  proper  authorities  as 
good  loyal  citizens  should  do,  for  fear  of  falling 
under  the  displeasure  of  their  masters  and  the  curse 
of  the  unions.  Were  not  the  working  members  of 
the  unions  regarded  by  their  masters  as  slaves,  as 
men  having  no  individuality  and  freedom,  as  men 
having  no  wills  of  their  own,  the  masters  would  not 
dare  to  use  them  as  they  have  been  doing;  they 
would  not  dare  to  order  them  to  boycott  and  destroy 
the  business  of  those  who  have  fallen  under  the  curse 
of  the  union ;  they  would  not  dare  to  order  them  to 
persecute  in  every  conceivable  manner,  members 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  33 

who,  from  any  cause  have  fallen  under  the  ban  or 
displeasure  of  the  unions;  they  would  not  dare  to 
order  them  to  commit  any  of  the  various  atrocious 
criminal  acts  justly  chargeable  to  the  unions. 

A  bitter  campaign  was  carried  on  for  years  by  the 
abolitionists  for  the  freedom  and  emancipation  of 
the  negro  slaves  of  the  South,  and  we  who  were 
active  in  that  campaign,  propose  to  engage  in  an 
active  campaign  for  the  freedom  and  independence 
and  equal  rights  of  the  white  slaves  of  the  unions. 
When  it  shall  have  been  pointed  out  to  the  honest, 
intelligent  members  how  they  were  forced  into  the 
union  by  the  cunningly  laid  schemes  of  labor  leaders 
using  the  weak-minded  and  vicious  elements  of  the 
organization  to  exert  a  powerful  pressure  and  influ- 
ence upon  them  to  join  it,  there  is  hope  that  they 
may  be  aroused  to  see  their  humiliating  slavery  and 
arise  and  assert  their  individuality,  independence 
and  freedom,  by  breaking  away  from  their  bondage. 
We  know  that  during  the  Civil  War,  when  our 
armies  were  in  the  South  struggling  for  the  suprem- 
acy of  the  Union  and  for  equal  rights  and  exact 
justice  for  all,  that  there  was  hardly  a  slave  in  a 
thousand  who  did  not  long  for  his  independence  and 
freedom,  who  did  not  devoutly  desire  to  see  the  faces 
of  his  friends  and  deliverers,  and  could  not  be  made 
to  believe  by  his  master  that  his  deliverers  were 
monsters  with  horns  and  one  eye  in  the  center  of 
the  forehead  of  each,  and  who  did  not  always  stand 
ready  with  loyal  heart  and  hands,  by  day  or  by 
night,  in  fair  weather  or  foul,  to  assist  his  deliverers 


34  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

in  every  possible  manner  for  the  success  of  the  cause. 
Shall  the  oppressed  of  our  own  race  and  blood  who 
are  slaves  of  the  unions,  and  know  that  they  should 
not  be  classed  with  the  weak-minded  and  vicious 
elements  of  the  organization,  show  less  interest  and 
zeal  in  securing  their  emancipation,  their  independ- 
ence and  freedom,  than  the  black  slaves  of  the  South, 
who  never  had  the  advantages  of  the  white  slaves 
of  the  unions  ?  We  who  were  engaged  in  that  great 
work  of  altruism,  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  of 
the  South,  did  not  ask  or  demand  of  them  any  money 
or  valuable  thing  for  our  work  in  behalf  of  their 
freedom,  and  we  do  not  now  ask  or  demand  any  con- 
tribution of  money  or  valuable  thing  from  those 
whom  we  wish  to  free,  to  emancipate  from  the  union 
slavery. 

In  view  of  the  great  annual  losses  to  the  members, 
it  would  be  to  their  advantage  if  they  should  regard 
every  pretended  champion  of  labor  who  comes  to 
them  soliciting  money  in  any  form,  for  promoting 
the  cause  of  labor,  as  a  man  who,  to  advance  his  own 
selfish  interests,  would  enslave  them  under  the  pre- 
text of  wishing  to  help  them.  They  should  be  im- 
pressed with  the  idea  that  a  man  who  would  under- 
take to  use  them  to  injure  and  oppress  a  fellow  man 
in  the  pursuit  of  his  lawful  business,  might  naturally 
be  expected  to  have  an  ulterior  purpose  of  using 
them  to  their  own  injury  and  oppression.  And  when 
we  think  of  any  class  of  men  controlling  another 
class,  for  any  purpose  whatever,  we  think  of  them 
in  the  light  of  masters  controlling  slaves.  We  can- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  35 

not  think  of  another  controlling  our  activities,  our 
conduct,  without  thinking  of  subordinating  or  yield- 
ing up  our  individuality  to  that  other.  Now  the 
members  do  or  do  not  yield  up  their  individuality  to 
the  unions,  or  those  who  control  and  direct  their 
principles  and  policies.  We  take  it  that  no  one  will 
deny  the  subordination  or  yielding  up  of  the  individ- 
uality of  the  members  to  the  leaders,  or  will  deny 
that  yielding  up  of  individuality  is  a  form  of  slavery. 
And  when  the  officials  speak  of  being  masters  of  so 
many  minds,  they  acknowledge  that  the  slavery 
exists. 

The  hard-hearted  masters  have  no  faith  in  the 
prophesies  of  Cassandra ;  they  are  deaf  to  the  rumb- 
lings of  the  distant  thunder;  they  see  no  signs  of 
the  approaching  storm ;  they  do  not  believe  that  there 
is  a  Red  Sea  that  will  part  and  allow  their  slaves  to 
pass  over  and  go  free,  and  overwhelm  them  in  its 
waves  in  their  wicked  pursuit.  In  their  narrow  con- 
ceptions of  social  relations,  they  do  not  realize  that 
there  has  been  a  constant  growth  of  the  sentiments 
of  justice  and  equal  rights  among  all  classes  of  our 
people  since  the  Civil  War,  and  that  it  is  possible  in 
a  few  years  to  educate  the  union  slaves  to  abhor  that 
slavery  as  much  as  the  negroes  of  to-day  abhor  the 
negro  slavery  of  ante  bellum  times. 

There  is  no  law  of  psychology  better  established 
than  the  fact  that  our  own  attitude  and  expression 
begets  a  like  attitude  and  expression  in  those  with 
whom  we  come  in  contact.  The  smile  of  the  parent 
or  any  other  person,  evokes  a  smile  from  the  infant, 


36  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

and  an  expression  of  anger  or  distress  begets  in  it 
an  expression  of  fear  or  distress.  The  jolly  expres- 
sion of  a  single  individual  will  generally  light  up 
the  expressions  or  countenances  of  a  company  of 
several  persons,  or  the  sour,  sullen  expression  of  a 
single  individual  may  affect  the  countenances  of 
every  one  in  a  company  of  several  persons.  And 
continuing  this  line  of  thought,  we  know  that  the 
constant  quarrelsome  and  belligerent  attitude  of  the 
unions,  has  developed  a  defensive  attitude  in  all  who 
do  not  believe  in  their  principles  and  policies  and 
conduct, — in  fact  has  developed  defensive  organiza- 
tions as  industrial  and  employers  associations,  and 
the  strike  breaker,  the  fighting  arm  of  law  and  order, 
who  is  always  ready  to  meet  the  educational  com- 
mittee of  the  unions  in  their  aggressive  conduct  in 
making  war  on  communities  and  individuals,  hand 
to  hand  and  hilt  to  hilt.  It  was  considered  sport 
and  a  light  matter,  when  three  or  four  thugs  and 
sluggers  of  the  educational  committee  on  picket  duty 
could  report  to  labor  headquarters  during  a  strike, 
that  they  had  in  so  many  cases,  chased  and  over- 
taken an  independent  worker  attempting  to  work 
and  persuaded  him  to  desist  from  working  by  beat- 
ing him  to  death  with  clubs,  sticks  and  missiles. 
But  when  these  thugs  and  sluggers  of  the  educational 
committee,  were  caught  in  the  very  act  of  their  cow- 
ardly and  fiendish  conduct  by  the  silent  and  effective 
strike  breaker  and  taken  by  the  ears  and  collars 
and  hustled  off  to  prison  with  criminal  charges 
of  assault  or  murder  lodged  against  them,  serious 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  37 

expressions  prevailed  at  labor  headquarters,  instead 
of  expressions  of  chuckling  fiendish  delight,  as  had 
formerly  been  the  case.  When  the  masters  use  such 
weak-minded  and  moral  perverts  as  Harry  Orchard 
and  others  of  his  kind,  to  carry  out  the  bloody  and 
fiendish  work  they  have  planned,  they  should  not 
whine  when  the  strike  breaker  appears  on  the  scene 
to  take  the  place  of  the  striker,  the  white  slave,  or 
to  do  good  hard  fighting  if  necessary,  in  arresting 
the  miscreants  who  have  been  sent  out  in  armed 
squads  to  persuade  singly  independent  workers  to 
desist  from  working,  or  to  refuse  work  abandoned 
by  the  strikers.  There  are  many  bold  men  who  take 
as  keen  an  interest  in  running  down  and  capturing 
criminals,  as  the  sportsman  in  hunting  big  game,  and 
as  the  unions  teach  envy,  hate  and  selfishness,  they 
furnish  the  game  for  the  excitement  of  the  strike 
breaker,  who  is  destined  to  become  much  more  in 
evidence  until  the  unions  reform  and  give  up  their 
lawless  and  violent  methods. 

Nearly  all  the  bloody  wars  of  the  world,  nearly 
all  the  wholesale  slaughterings  of  peoples,  persecu- 
tions and  outrages  against  personal  liberty,  have 
been  in  the  name  of  some  holy  cause  or  religion. 
Thousands,  nay  millions  of  men  have  fallen  in  battle 
and  on  the  march  from  exposure  and  from  intol- 
erable thirst  and  hunger  to  vindicate  the  religion 
of  Christ  or  Mohammed,  and  other  thousands 
have  been  cruelly  tortured  and  butchered  and  con- 
signed to  the  flames  or  buried  alive,  in  the  name  of 
the  Savior,  because  they  were  honest  to  their  own 


38  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

conscience  and  could  not  believe  in  Him  in  the  same 
manner  as  their  persecutors;  because  they  believed 
that  He  looked  upon  mankind  with  more  kindliness 
and  compassion  than  their  persecutors.  We  do  not 
deny  that  many  of  those  who  led  their  victims  to  the 
stake  and  applied  the  torch  that  lighted  the  flames 
which  consumed  them,  were  honest,  conscientious 
men,  but  ignorant,  of  fanatical  zeal,  who  knew 
nothing  about  individual  freedom.  With  strong, 
courageous  men  here  and  there  who  asserted  their 
individuality  and  freedom,  openly  or  clandestinally, 
gaining  a  few  converts  from  time  to  time,  the  think- 
ing part  of  the  world  has  gradually  grown  up  to  a 
condition  in  which,  perhaps  a  majority  of  the  people 
of  the  leading  nations,  have  some  conception  of  indi- 
vidual freedom,  equal  rights  and  exact  justice.  In 
this  country  the  conception  is  as  widespread  as  in 
any  other,  and  yet  it  is  by  no  means  universal.  It 
is  the  dominant  influence,  as  has  been  shown  when  it 
has  been  necessary  to  secure  a  test  of  opinions.  It 
was  not  only  recognized,  but  strongly  emphasized 
in  the  adoption  of  our  National  Constitution,  and 
all  subsequent  legislation,  State  and  National,  has 
taken  it  into  account.  The  Civil  War  had  the  effect 
of  widening  the  conception  of  men's  relations  to  each 
other,  and  to  make  them  feel  and  assert  their  inde- 
pendence, individuality  and  industrial  freedom,  more 
keenly  than  they  had  done  prior  to  that  time.  But 
since  the  abolition  of  slavery  there  has  been  a  tre- 
mendous foreign  immigration  poured  into  this  coun- 
try year  after  year  from  all  the  nations  of  Europe, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  39 

and  with  this  great  influx  of  foreign  immigrants 
with  their  foreign  ideas,  there  has  grown  up  a  power- 
ful organization  known  as  the  unions  or  trades 
unions,  which,  with  few  exceptions,  have  been  dom- 
inated by  leaders  of  violent  tendencies,  indeed  of 
almost  anarchistic  tendencies,  and  whose  violent 
acts  have  been  in  the  name  of  union  labor.  If  any 
of  these  leaders  or  violent  men  were  ever  engaged 
in  any  useful  business  or  profession,  or  ever  per- 
formed any  useful  labor,  they  evidently  did  not 
make  a  success  of  it,  for  as  a  rule  men  stick  to  that 
honorable  business  or  profession  which  makes  them 
the  best  living.  Those  who  have  never  performed 
very  much,  if  any,  useful  labor,  gifted  with  loquac- 
ity, but  with  unstable  minds,  have,  in  many  instances, 
worked  themselves  in  as  leaders  in  the  unions,  and 
have  had  the  great  presumption  to  get  up  and  talk 
and  make  demands  and  issue  orders  and  decrees,  as 
to  when  the  members  of  the  unions  shall  work  and 
when  they  shall  strike,  and  when  an  employer  shall 
be  held  up,  as  a  highwayman  holds  up  his  victim, 
to  pay  tribute  to  satisfy  their  unreasonable  demands. 
Compliance  with  such  demands,  when  backed  by 
threats,  deprives  the  employer  of  his  freedom,  and 
makes  him  as  much  of  a  slave  as  the  members  of 
the  union.  The  men  who  have  never  initiated  any- 
thing useful;  who  have  never  fathered  a  useful 
enterprise  which  employed  as  many  as  two  or  three 
men,  have  the  extraordinary  presumption  to  demand 
in  the  name  of  union  labor,  that  City  Councils  shall 
pass  ordinances,  and  State  legislatures  and  the  Na- 


40  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

tional  Congress,  enact  laws  discriminating  in  favor 
of  union  labor  so  as  to  give  it  a  monopoly  of  all  the 
public  work,  thus  making  it  a  class  of  special  priv- 
ileges, to  the  great  hurt  and  injury  of  all  other 
classes, — to  the  enslaving  of  all  other  classes.  They 
would  have  the  laws,  municipal,  state  and  national, 
discriminate  against  free,  independent  workers, 
and  shut  them  out  from  all  public  employment ;  shut 
them  out  because  of  their  honesty  and  independence, 
because  they  refuse  to  sell  themselves  as  slaves  to 
the  unions;  because  they  own  their  own  homes  and 
pay  taxes  for  the  protection  of  all  alike,  and  because 
they  would  be  loyal  to  the  interests  of  their  em- 
ployers, loyal  to  their  city,  the  community  and  the 
Nation,  and  because  they  were  law-abiding  and 
peace-loving  citizens.  They  assume  to  dictate  how 
an  employer  shall  conduct  his  business,  and  whom  he 
shall  employ,  the  number  of  hours  his  men  shall 
work,  and  how  much  they  shall  do,  and  when  it  suits 
their  convenience,  to  take  upon  themselves  the  audac- 
ity to  order  independent  workers  to  cease  work  on 
jobs  if  the  union  wants  them.  We  regard  men  who 
submit  to  the  dictation  of  another,  as  the  slaves  of 
the  dictator.  To  swell  their  own  pockets  and  to 
perpetuate  their  despotic  rule,  they  rob  their  own 
members  of  millions  of  dollars  every  year  by  throw- 
ing them  out  of  employment,  in  ordering  strikes,  and 
in  assessments  and  penalties,  and  in  raising  funds 
for  many  extravagant,  useless  and  criminal  purposes. 
Plain  working  men  do  not  submit  to  such  great 
losses  without  becoming  the  slaves  of  those  who 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  41 

order  them  to  submit.  The  masters  who  are  shouting 
so  loud  in  the  name  of  union  labor,  and  talk  so 
mournfully  of  the  grinding  toil  and  sweat  shops  of 
laboring  men,  are  unmoved  by  the  cries,  the  groans, 
the  tears,  the  heartaches,  and  the  sufferings  of  the 
wives  and  children  of  the  men  whose  wages  they  have 
cut  off  by  ordering  them  out  on  strikes,  and  by  rob- 
bing them  in  other  ways  of  the  earnings  which  were 
paid  them.  They  are  unmoved  because  they  know 
that  they  are  dealing  with  slaves  securely  bound 
and  unable  to  help  themselves.  In  order  to  perpetu- 
ate and  strengthen  their  power  and  influence,  and 
intimidate  communities,  they  have  assessed  the  mem- 
bers of  the  unions  to  raise  funds  to  keep  hired  loby- 
ists  before  Congress  and  the  State  legislatures,  to 
demand  such  changes  in  the  penal  laws  of  the  coun- 
try, as  will  give  the  hired  thugs,  sluggers  and  mur- 
derers of  the  unions  a  free  hand  in  committing  acts 
of  violence  and  destruction  of  property,  and  then 
exempt  them  from  prosecution  and  punishment,  in 
extending  the  work  of  the  union  slavery.  The 
masters  who  are  never  known  to  give  up  their  jobs 
for  the  good  of  the  cause,  denounce  as  unpardonable 
traitors  to  the  unions,  any  members  who  express  a 
wish  to  better  their  condition  by  throwing  off  the 
slavery  into  which  they  had  been  forced  and  becom- 
ing free  men  again.  They  use  the  rank  and  file  of 
the  organization  to  carry  on  a  predatory  war- 
fare against  the  business  and  commerce  of  the 
country  in  a  more  discreditable  manner  than  the 
knights  and  barons  of  feudal  times  who  were  not 


42  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

over  scrupulous  about  using  their  retainers  in  rob- 
bing their  neighbors,  even  the  bishops  participating 
in  the  practice. 

No  intelligent  upright  man  can  stand  up  and  truth- 
fully say  that  there  is  a  single  man  in  all  this  coun- 
try, who  knows  enough  to  value  his  independence 
and  freedom  as  the  most  precious  gift,  who  will  vol- 
untarily, assert  that  he  is  in  need  of  the  union.  If 
then  there  is  no  man  who  knows  enough  to  value 
his  independence  and  freedom  above  everything  else, 
has  no  need  of  the  unions,  it  is  evident  only  those 
who  do  not  value  their  independence  and  freedom 
above  everything  else,  have  need  for 'it.  And  men 
who  do  not  value  their  independence  and  freedom 
as  the  greatest  possible  gift  in  this  world,  we  think 
we  are  justified  in  classing  as  weak-minded  or  vi- 
cious. While  we  do  not  know  what  proportion  of 
the  unions  is  made  up  of  the  weak-minded  and  vi- 
cious, we  believe  it  is  about  one-half,  but  at  any 
rate  enough  when  manipulated  by  selfish,  unscrupu- 
lous leaders  to  carry  any  motion  they  may  put  and 
indorse  any  action  they  may  suggest.  It  is  the  testi- 
mony of  nearly  every  one  who  knows  anything  about 
the  inside  workings  of  the  unions,  that  the  officials 
run  things  to  suit  themselves;  that  it  is  the  rarest 
occurrence  to  hear  of  a  working  member  publicly 
opposing  a  measure  proposed  by  an  official  of  the 
federation,  and  if  the  working  member,  a  real  work- 
ing man,  should  dare  do  such  a  thing,  the  glib- 
tongued  official  would  have  him  howled  and  hissed 
down  in  a  moment  by  intimating  and  insinuating  that 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  43 

the  member  was  trying  to  give  aid  and  comfort  to 
the  "scab"  element,  or  the  hated  employer.  Having 
complete  control  of  the  weak-minded  and  vicious 
elements  of  the  unions,  the  masters  can  defy  the 
decent  elements  of  the  organization,  and  have  no 
trouble  in  getting  adopted  and  ratified  any  measure 
in  the  name  of  union  labor  they  desire.  That  the 
work  of  the  masters  is  entirely  selfish  and  heartless, 
is  shown  by  the  fact  that  they  throw  out  of  employ- 
ment, a  thousand,  ten  thousand,  or  even  a  hundred 
thousand  men  by  ordering  them  out  on  strike,  with- 
out offering  to  sacrifice  their  own  salaries  while  the 
strike  is  unsettled.  Now  as  the  masters  pretend  that 
they  are  disinterested  champions  of  laboring  men 
they  should  be  given  an  opportunity  to  prove  their 
pretentions.  To  protect  those  in  the  Civil  Service  of 
the  Government  from  being  constantly  threatened 
and  hounded  and  squeezed  and  robbed  by  political 
agents  representing  themselves  as  soliciting  and  col- 
lecting in  the  name  of  some  political  party,  Con- 
gress passed  a  law  known  as  the  Civil  Service  Act, 
which  provides  that  no  person  * '  shall  directly  or  in- 
directly, or  be  in  any  manner  concerned  in  soliciting 
or  receiving,  any  assessment,  subscription  or  contri- 
bution for  any  political  purpose  whatever,  from  any 
officer,  clerk  or  employee  of  the  United  States,  or 
any  department,  branch,  or  bureau  thereof,  or  from 
any  person  receiving  a  salary  or  compensation  from 
moneys  derived  from  the  Treasury  of  the  United 
States "  .  .  .  "That  no  officer,  clerk  or  other 
person  in  the  service  of  the  United  States,  shall, 


44  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

directly  or  indirectly,  give  or  hand  over  to  any  other 
officer,  clerk  or  other  person  in  the  service  of  the 
United  States,  or  to  any  Senator,  or  Member  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  or  Territorial  Delegate, 
any  money  or  other  valuable  thing  on  account  of 
or  to  be  applied  to  the  promotion  of  any  political 
object  whatever. "  The  penalty  for  the  violation  of 
the  law  may  be  a  fine  to  the  limit  of  five  thousand 
dollars,  or  three  years  imprisonment  or  both.  Now 
we  claim  that  there  should  be  National  and  State 
laws  along  the  lines  of  the  Civil  Service  Act  for  the 
protection  of  the  laboring  men  of  this  country  who 
are  constantly  being  threatened  and  hounded  and 
importuned  and  robbed  and  plundered  of  a  good  part 
of  their  honest  earnings  by  pretended  champions  of 
labor  who  are  in  reality  dead  beats,  and  scallawags 
and  hungry  sharks,  out  for  the  money  there  is  in 
the  game.  Shall  the  strong  and  healthy  and  compe- 
tent stand  idle  while  the  weak-minded  laboring  men, 
who  need  all  their  earnings  for  the  support  of  them- 
selves and  their  families,  are  obliged  to  pay  a  large 
part  of  their  wages  to  dead  beats  and  walking  dele- 
gates for  the  privilege  of  working  and  give  a  lien 
on  their  wages  while  permitted  to  work?  There  is 
greater  need  for  such  a  protective  law  for  the  labor- 
ing men  of  the  country,  against  the  demands  of  the 
greedy  masters,  than  there  is  for  those  employed 
in  the  Civil  Service  of  the  Government.  If  the  union 
officials  are  really  honest  champions  of  labor,  as  they 
pretend,  and  want  the  laboring  man  to  have  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  45 

full  benefit  of  his  earnings,  they  should  earnestly 
work  for  such  a  law.  But  we  know  they  will  not, 
for  men  who,  year  after  year,  are  unmoved  by  the 
sufferings  and  hardships  of  the  thousands  of  families 
of  the  men  whom  they  have  robbed  of  their  wages 
and  made  desolate  and  miserable,  will  find  some 
excuse  to  offer  for  not  wishing  to  do  justice  to  their 
victims.  Let  these  pretended  champions  of  labor  be 
compelled  to  show  their  hands,  and  let  them  be  com- 
pelled to  keep  their  hands  off  the  throats  and 
pockets,  or  any  part  of  the  earnings  of  laboring  men, 
and  then  see  how  noisy  they  will  be  in  fanning  the 
flames  of  persecution  and  riot  in  the  name  of  union 
labor.  Before  the  abolition  of  slavery  the  abolition- 
ists or  their  agents  did  not  threaten  and  hound  and 
extort  money  from  the  slaves  for  the  furthering  of 
the  cause  looking  to  their  freedom.  There  is  no  need 
of  further  commenting  on  the  general  character  of 
those  who,  by  threats  and  misrepresentations,  an- 
nually rob  and  plunder  of  their  earnings  in  the  name 
of  union  labor,  probably  nearly  a  million  men,  who, 
if  not  weak-minded,  have  no  means  of  protecting 
themselves  from  the  hungry  sharks  by  whom  they 
are  constantly  pursued.  It  is  a  shame  to  our  civili- 
zation that  many  of  these  men  occupying  a  mental 
zone  bordering  on  mental  alienation,  should  be 
allowed  to  be  preyed  upon  by  pretended  altruists, 
but  really  men  of  unbounded  selfishness.  When  any 
men  or  class  of  men  refuse  to  be  guided  by  principles 
of  equal  rights  and  justice,  or  of  limiting  the  freedom 


46  THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY 

of  each,  only  by  the  like  freedom  of  all,  they  will 
bear  watching  and  their  actions  will  need  curbing. 

Swindlers  and  pretenders  of  being  engaged  in 
good  works,  will  explore  every  possible  field  of 
human  activities  for  the  purpose  of  exploiting  their 
plausible  schemes  for  extorting  money  from  the  un- 
thinking and  weak-minded,  and  perhaps  there  is  not 
a  more  fertile  field  for  successfully  working  such 
schemes  than  in  the  field  of  labor  where  there  are 
so  many  unable  to  protect  themselves.  It  has  been 
amply  shown  that  the  conduct  of  the  union  officials 
towards  the  members,  is  the  conduct  of  masters 
towards  their  slaves,  and  that  the  conduct  of  the 
members  towards  the  officials  is  the  conduct  of  slaves 
towards  their  masters. 

"In  the  Name  of  Union  Labor, "  is  the  synonym 
for  conduct  that  is  wholly  undesirable  in  a  civilized 
state;  for  conduct  that  is  heartless  and  reckless  in 
dealing  with  the  rights  of  those  outside  the  unions; 
for  conduct  so  selfish  that  it  entirely  ignores  the 
common  welfare ;  for  conduct  that  ignores  and  takes 
no  account  of  loyalty  to  one's  country,  community 
or  employer ;  for  conduct  that  is  as  blind  and  unsym- 
pathetic as  that  of  the  savage ;  for  conduct  not  eman- 
ating from  free,  liberty-loving  men,  but  from  slaves 
directed  by  masters  who  have  no  respect  for  the 
rights  of  others. 

It  has  also  been  shown  that  the  conduct  and  activ- 
ities of  the  members  of  the  unions,  have  been  dic- 
tated, controlled  and  directed  by  the  officials,  con- 
trolled and  directed  in  a  manner  that  has  restricted 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 


47 


them  to  as  narrow  limits  as  were  the  conduct  and 
activities  of  the  black  slaves  of  the  South  restricted 
by  their  masters.  We  do  not  see  how  there  could  be 
a  "  master  of  a  million  minds,"  without  he  had  a 
million  slaves. 


CHAPTER  HI. 
THE  OPEN  SHOP  VERSUS  THE  CLOSED  SHOP. 

These  expressions  are  of  recent  origin  and  repre- 
sent the  two  methods  of  doing  business,  of  employing 
labor  in  the  industrial  world,  just  as  the  words 
"  scab  "  and  "  parasite,"  represent  the  contempt, 
derision  and  hatred,  union  and  independent  workers 
have  for  each  other. 

By  Open  Shop  is  meant  any  business  that  employs 
labor  without  questioning  those  employed  as  to 
whether  they  belong  to  any  labor,  political  or  relig- 
ious organization;  any  business  fair  to  all  who  seek 
fair  returns  for  honest  labor. 

The  open  shop  does  not  even  discriminate  against 
members  of  the  union,  and  they  may,  and  do,  work 
side  by  side  with  independent  workmen. 

All  questions  of  wages  and  hours  are  settled  be- 
tween the  employer  and  employee,  as  between  two 
free  men  acting  for  themselves,  and  there  is  no 
interference  from  walking  delegates  or  business 
agents  of  the  union. 

An  employee  does  not  pay  heavy  fees  to  the  union 
for  permission  to  work,  but  he  may  come  erect,  free, 
as  a  man  among  men  to  make  his  own  contract,  with- 

48 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  49 

out  middle  men  or  dead  beats  getting  a  rake-off 
from  his  wages. 

If  he  is  a  man  of  energy,  he  knows  that  he  will  be 
paid  according  to  his  merit;  he  knows  that  if  his 
work  in  a  day  is  twice  as  productive,  is  worth  twice 
as  much  to  his  employer,  as  the  work  of  another  man, 
he  will  be  paid  according  to  the  productivity  of  his 
work,  instead  of  under  the  union  principle  of  paying 
the  sloth  or  inefficient  as  much  as  the  efficient  man. 

In  the  open  shop  we  have  in  operation  the  natural 
principles  which  have  prevailed  throughout  nature 
in  the  evolution  of  life,  of  the  efficient  profiting  by 
their  efficiency,  and  of  the  inefficient  failing  to  reach 
the  goal  by  their  inefficiency. 

In  the  open  shop  the  employer  manages  his  own 
business  without  the  dictation,  meddling  or  inter- 
ference of  the  irresponsible,  alien,  disloyal  walking 
delegate  or  business  agent  of  the  union  who  has  no 
interest  in  the  common  welfare  of  the  community, 
except  for  exacting  tribute. 

In  the  open  shop  the  employer  and  his  employees 
regard  each  other  as  friends  who  have  mutual  inter- 
ests in  making  the  business  successful. 

Here  in  the  open  shop  a  man  may  be  loyal  to  his 
country,  its  laws,  its  flag,  its  courts;  loyal  to  the 
community  in  which  he  lives;  loyal  to  the  interests 
of  his  employer;  loyal  to  the  welfare  of  his  family, 
and  loyal  to  his  own  conscience,  without  the  fear  of 
having  the  anathema  of  "  scab  "  hurled  at  him  by 
a  mob  of  infuriated  demons;  without  the  fear  of 
having  his  case  attended  to  by  the  "  educational 


50  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

committee  "  under  the  direction  of  the  walking  dele- 
gate or  business  agent  of  the  union ;  without  the  fear 
of  the  persecution  of  his  family,  the  insulting  of  his 
wife,  and  the  chasing  of  his  children  from  school  by 
other  children  whose  fathers  belong  to  the  union 
slavery,  controlled  and  directed  by  teachers  of  envy, 
hate  and  selfishness. 

Here  in  the  open  shop  the  employee  may  stand 
erect  and  free,  holding  whatever  views  of  life  and 
liberty  he  may  choose,  without  the  fear  of  being 
hounded  by  an  outsider  and  alien,  to  give  up  his 
earnings  as  he  would  to  a  bandit,  regardless  of  the 
needs  of  his  family,  his  wife  and  babes,  to  support 
a  set  of  profligate  parasites  who  never  strike  or 
never  sweat, — parasites  who  stand  ready  to  inter- 
cept the  food  going  to  the  mouths  of  hungry  children. 

Here  in  the  open  shop  is  a  school  of  brotherly  love 
and  respect  wherein  free  men  are  taught  by  precept 
and  example  to  have  respect  for  each  others  equal 
rights;  where  each  is  taught  to  demand  no  more 
rights  or  privileges  than  he  is  willing  to  concede 
to  all  others;  to  love  honest  work  which  brings 
honest  returns,  instead  of  hating  it  and  regarding  it 
as  criminal ;  to  respect  honest  men  who  love  to  work ; 
to  love  loyalty  to  our  Government,  its  flag,  its  laws 
and  its  courts;  to  respect  the  man  who  loves  inde- 
pendence and  freedom;  to  respect  the  man  whose 
first  solicitude  is  for  the  welfare  of  his  wife  and 
babies,  and  uses  his  earnings  to  provide  for  their 
comfort  and  happiness;  to  distrust  the  man  who 
would  starve  his  wife  and  babies  to  give  his  earn- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  51 

ings  to  parasites  of  the  unions,  to  tickle  their  vanity 
and  make  them  swell  and  strut  in  exhibition  of  their 
importance. 

In  the  open  shop  school  of  brotherly  love,  hatred 
of  fellowmen  is  banished  and  respect  and  good  will 
substituted. 

Those  who  are  dominated  by  the  influences  of  this 
school  do  not  believe  in  treating  our  domestic  animals 
with  cruelty,  and  regard  with  horror  men  whose 
natures  have  been  so  far  perverted  by  false  teach- 
ings as  to  lead  them  to  assault,  gouge  out  the  eyes, 
put  carbolic  acid  in  the  mouth  and  maim  men  whose 
only  offence  was  that  they  desired  to  work  and  pro- 
vide food  and  clothing  and  shelter  for  their  wives 
and  children. 

In  the  school  of  the  open  shop  there  is  no  star 
chamber  councils  to  send  out  educational  committees 
to  assault,  murder  and  assassinate  innocent  men  be- 
cause they  love  independence  and  freedom  and  de- 
sire to  work  and  support  their  families,  and  because 
they  do  not  wish  to  pay  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  for  permission  to  work. 

And  the  employes  of  the  open  shop  know  that 
there  is  no  power  to  extort  from  them  their  earnings 
to  support  the  hard-hearted  masters  of  the  union 
slavery. 

In  the  open  shop  the  employer  is  not  restricted  in 
the  number  of  apprentices  he  may  keep  to  learn  his 
trade,  and  there  is  no  committee  to  wait  on  him  and 
inform  him  that  his  men  will  all  strike  if  he  under- 
takes to  have  his  own  son  learn  his  trade  so  as  to 


52  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

be  able  to  intelligently  take  charge  of  his  business 
in  the  event  of  his  becoming  disabled  or  incapaci- 
tated. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  rules  of  the  open  shop  that 
would  prevent  members  of  a  union  confined  to  its 
legitimate  purposes  as  prescribed  in  the  Federal  stat- 
utes, from  working  therein. 

Every  man  who  believes  in  independence  and  free- 
dom, equal  rights  and  justice,  the  abolition  of  all 
forms  of  slavery,  and  of  the  efficient  profiting  by 
their  efficiency,  must  be  warm  advocates  of  the  open 
shop. 

In  the  further  development  of  the  open  shop 
movement,  we  may  look  for  increased  efficiency  in 
the  men  of  the  trades,  an  efficiency  which,  under 
the  policy  of  the  unions,  of  making  work  and  encour- 
aging slobs  and  slovenly  workmen,  has  brought  it 
down  to  the  lowest  state. 

It  has  been  the  law  of  life  from  the  beginning,  and 
must  continue  to  the  end,  that  the  superior  shall 
profit  by  their  superiority,  and  the  inferior  lose  by 
their  inferiority,  and  from  our  standpoint  it  is  well 
that  it  has  been  and  shall  continue  to  be  so.  If  this 
was  not  the  law  of  life,  there  could  be  no  progress, 
no  evolution,  and  we  would  still  be  in  the  condition 
of  our  remotest  ancestors.  Indeed  we  can  hardly 
conceive  of  any  other  arrangement  when  we  con- 
sider the  matter  carefully. 

In  the  open  shop  of  nature  every  race  has  its 
enemies,  and  members  of  the  same  species  are  com- 
petitors for  food  and  comforts  in  the  struggle  for  life. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  53 

The  teeth  and  claws  and  limbs  of  cavnivorous 
animals  show  that  they  have  been  developed  and 
adapted  to  catching,  tearing  and  devouring  the  flesh 
of  herbivorous  animals,  and  the  limbs  and  eyes  and 
ears  of  herbivores  show  that  they  are  developed 
on  the  lines  of  adapting  them  to  seeing  and  hearing 
enemies  at  a  distance  and  escaping  from  them  by 
fleetness. 

In  the  struggle  for  life  between  the  two  races,  the 
fleetest  and  most  vigilant  of  the  herbivores  will  most 
likely  escape  their  enemies  to  live  and  leave  off- 
spring with  similar  adaptations,  while  the  less  effi- 
cient will  likely  be  taken  and  devoured  by  their 
enemies  and  leave  no  offspring. 

And  among  the  carnivores  those  most  successful 
in  running  down,  capturing  and  devouring  prey, 
will  be  stronger  than  those  who  fail  in  the  chase, 
and  in  the  struggle  for  the  females  the  less  efficient 
males  will  be  destroyed  or  prevented  from  perpetu- 
ating their  inefficiency. 

In  our  own  race  and  civilization,  there  are  many 
who  are  mentally  or  physically  weak,  capable  of 
doing  only  certain  kinds  of  unskilled  work,  and  who 
must  naturally  find  their  level  of  usefulness  far  be- 
low that  of  those  who  are  many  times  stronger  men- 
tally or  physically. 

In  fact  every  man  will  very  nearly  measure  up  to 
the  level  of  his  ambition  and  ideals,  and  if  he  has  no 
definite  ideals  to  strive  for,  there  is  not  much  use 
of  trying  to  lift  him  up  to  some  other  man's  ideal 
which  he  would  be  unable  to  appreciate. 


54  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

If  the  property  worked  for  and  accumulated  by 
the  competent,  were  taken  from  them  and  put  into 
the  hands  of  the  incompetent,  they  would  not  long 
hold  it,  for  there  are  plenty  of  men  in  every  com- 
munitjr  who  would  take  advantage  of  their  weakness 
to  wrest  it  from  them,  just  as  the  officials  of  the 
union  take  advantage  of  the  weakness  of  the  simple- 
minded  members  to  wrest  their  earnings  from  them 
under  various  pretexts  of  fees  and  fines  to  be  applied 
to  the  good  of  the  cause. 

In  the  open  shop  there  are  no  unprincipled  hungry 
sharks  or  walking  delegates,  organizers  or  bus- 
iness agents  to  demand  and  intercept  the  earn- 
ings of  the  employee  and  divert  them  from  the  use 
of  his  family,  as  is  the  case  in  the  closed  shop  of  the 
union. 

These  hold-ups  of  walking  delegates,  and  business 
agents  of  the  unions  have  been  worked  to  the  limit 
with  employees  and  employers,  and  ought  to  be  the 
means  of  increasing  the  popularity  of  the  open  shop, 
where  fair  returns  for  fair  labor  is  the  motto. 

There  is  reason  for  believing  that  most  of  those 
who  work  in  the  open  shop  are  delighted  to  be  free 
from  a  form  of  slavery  that  requires  them  to  be 
false  and  disloyal  to  the  interests  of  employers  whom 
they  respect  and  regard  as  friends. 

It  is  a  satisfaction  worth  consideration  that  the 
open  shop  encourages  employees  to  strive  for  higher 
ideals  in  all  their  efforts,  and  to  increase  their  effi- 
ciency in  their  particular  trades. 

We  never  hear  employees  of  the  open  shop  de- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  55 

nouncing  restraining  orders  of  the  courts  to  prevent 
them  from  committing  crimes  against  their  fellow 
man,  for  they  have  no  desire  to  commit  crimes 
against  any  one. 

It  is  not  the  law-abiding  loyal  citizen  who  de- 
nounces the  injunctions  or  restraining  orders  of  the 
courts  in  labor  disturbances,  but  the  masters  of  the 
union  slavery  who  live  by  stirring  up  strife,  lawless- 
ness and  violence,  and  who  desire  a  free  hand  in 
their  crusade  of  wickedness. 

It  is  a  satisfaction  worth  consideration  that  the 
free  employees  of  the  open  shop  are  not  obliged  to  be 
locked  in  a  hall  with  a  howling  mob  and  compelled 
by  their  presence  to  endorse  the  violent  resolutions 
of  violent  leaders,  as  often  happens  with  peaceably 
inclined  members  of  the  unions. 

Those  who  have  watched  the  industrial  wars  in 
this  country  for  the  last  thirty  years,  involving  prop- 
erty losses  greater  than  the  losses  in  the  Civil  War, 
with  the  daily  blood-stained  tyrannies  and  oppres- 
sions of  the  unions,  hail  the  open  shop  as  the  dawn 
of  industrial  freedom  and  as  the  beginning  of  an 
era  when  free  men  may  assert  their  rights  and  resent 
the  interference  of  irresponsible  aliens  who  do  not 
claim  an  interest  in  common  with  the  communities 
where  they  operate  and  upon  which  they  cast  their 
baleful  influence. 

We  do  not  see  how  any  self-respecting  merchant 
or  banker  could  submit  to  an  irresponsible  book- 
keepers '  association  dictating  to  him  whom  he  should 
employ  to  handle  his  cash  or  keep  his  books. 


56  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

And  there  is  no  sound  reason  why  a  self-respecting 
manufacturer  should  allow  an  irresponsible  moul- 
der's union  to  dictate  to  him  whom  he  shall  or  shall 
not  employ  in  carrying  on  his  business,  and  the  terms 
he  shall  make  with  them. 

It  is  a  satisfaction  to  the  friends  of  industrial  peace 
and  social  order  to  know  that  the  open  shop  is  not 
a  place  for  hatching  crime  and  treason  like  the  star 
chamber  councils  of  the  unions  where  educational 
committees,  thugs,  sluggers,  and  murderers,  are 
assigned  to  do  their  foul  and  bloody  work,  and  where 
other  members  are  assigned  to  picketing  to  intercept 
and  dissuade  or  intimidate  independent  workers 
from  taking  the  places  of  strikers. 

In  the  open  shop  there  is  hope  of  educating  all 
classes  to  a  knowledge  that  any  policy  that  injures 
or  restricts  the  freedom  of  one  class,  will  injure  or 
restrict  the  freedom  of  all  other  classes,  and  that 
aliens  like  the  men  who  never  strike  or  never  sweat, 
and  who  have  no  interests  in  common  with  the  com- 
munity, will  likely  be  reckless  in  dealing  with  the 
rights  and  interests  of  that  community. 

In  the  open  shop  there  is  hope  of  correcting  the 
false  teachings  of  the  union  masters,  which  is  im- 
pressed upon  many,  that  the  interests  of  the  em- 
ployer and  employee  are  directly  opposed  and  de- 
structive of  each  other,  and  that  one  or  the  other 
must  go  to  the  wall. 

There  is  also  hope  of  developing  the  altruistic  feel- 
ings in  employers  and  employees  in  the  sense  that 
each  may  have  in  the  other  supplementary  eyes  and 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  57 

ears,  that  will  tend  to  guard  the  interests  of  each, 
eyes  and  ears  that  will  see  or  hear  threatened  danger 
to  the  other  and  give  timely  warning. 

It  is  by  these  altruistic  acts,  these  friendly  inter- 
ests in  the  welfare  of  others,  these  neighborly  acts 
as  we  generally  call  them,  that  makes  life  more  worth 
living,  and  raises  us  above  the  selfishness  and  cruelty 
of  the  savage. 

In  the  open  shop  the  doctrine  that  smiles  begets 
smiles,  that  kindliness  begets  kindliness,  that  confi- 
dence begets  confidence,  that  sympathy  begets  sym- 
pathy, finds  its  full  expression,  just  as  in  the  closed 
shop  of  the  union,  which  stands  for  the  incarnation 
of  selfishness  and  greed  and  the  militant  spirit  begets, 
in  those  with  whom  it  deals,  a  defensive  attitude, 
and  an  attitude  of  expected  attack. 

An  employee  of  the  open  shop  may  trade  with 
whom  he  pleases  without  fear  of  having  assessed 
against  him  fines  and  penalties  to  support  the  masters 
of  the  union  slavery,  as  under  the  closed  shop  sys- 
tem. 

He  may  read  the  newspaper  that  suits  him  without 
dictation  from  any  one  as  to  the  sort  of  mental  food 
he  shall  use. 

He  may  hear  all  sides  and  then  decide  what  is 
best  without  fear  of  bringing  upon  him  the  acts  of 
infuriated  demons  of  the  union. 

He  may  be  a  man  among  men  and  spurn  the  teach- 
ings of  hate  and  crime  and  treason  flowing  from 
the  mouths  of  men  who  live  by  intercepting  the 
food  going  to  satisfy  the  hunger  of  little  children. 


58  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

He  may  go  to  work  in  the  morning  without  fear 
of  an  official  of  the  union  slavery  ordering  him  to 
go  on  strike  for  an  indefinite  period  because  an  em- 
ployer in  a  distant  part  of  the  country  did  not  dis- 
charge an  independent  worker  on  the  demand  of 
another  organizer. 

An  employee  of  the  open  shop  does  not  pay  for 
permission  to  work,  or  pay  a  toll  on  his  wages  while 
he  works,  like  the  poor  member  under  the  domina- 
tion of  the  closed  shop,  who  not  only  pays  the  masters 
of  the  union  slavery  heavy  fees  for  permission  to 
work,  but  who  is  obliged  to  give  them  a  lien  on  his 
wages  all  the  time  he  is  permitted  to  work. 

There  are  so  many  advantages  to  workmen  in 
favor  of  the  open  shop,  that  we  believe  if  the  advo- 
cates of  the  two  systems,  the  open  shop  and  the 
closed  shop,  could  present  the  merits  of  each  to  the 
members  of  any  union  in  open  meetings,  and  a  vote 
could  be  taken  by  secret  ballot,  uninfluenced  by  any 
kind  of  pressure,  that  the  members  would  in  nearly 
every  case,  vote  for  the  open  shop. 

At  any  rate  the  advocates  of  the  open  shop  think 
that  the  merits  of  the  two  systems  should  be  fully 
and  fairly  presented  to  all  workmen  that  they  may 
have  the  opportunity  of  choosing  the  one  that  prom- 
ises them  the  fairest  returns  for  their  labor. 

The  advocates  of  industrial  freedom,  like  those 
who  advocated  the  abolition  of  domestic  slavery,  be- 
lieve in  the  fullest  discussion  and  publicity  of  all 
phases  of  the  questions  at  issue,  demanding  for  all 
parties  in  the  dispute,  toleration  and  the  utmost  free- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  59 

dom  of  action  without  prejudice.  "  Why  should  the 
spirit  of  mortal  be  proud?" 

In  presenting  the  claims  of  the  open  shop  for  con- 
sideration, it  may  be  well  to  call  attention  to  the 
fact  that  the  Constitutions  and  laws  of  the  General 
and  State  Governments,  make  them  all  open  shops 
in  the  employment  of  labor,  and  prohibits  them  from 
discriminating  against  men  on  account  of  their 
affiliation  or  non-affiliation  with  any  religious,  politi- 
cal or  labor  organization. 

It  has  been  recognized  by  all  sensible  men  that  it 
would  be  against  public  policy  for  the  State  or  any 
institution  under  the  protection  of  the  State,  to  dis- 
criminate against  any  man  seeking  employment,  on 
account  of  his  affiliation  or  non-affiliation  with  any 
religious,  political  or  labor  organization. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  prohibits 
the  States  from  making  or  enforcing  "  any  law 
which  shall  abridge  the  privileges  or  immunities  of 
the  citizens,"  and  if  such  laws  existed  in  any  of 
the  States,  probably  no  class  would  complain  more 
bitterly  of  their  oppression  than  the  men  of  labor 
organizations. 

The  General  Government  runs  an  open  shop  in  the 
employment  of  labor,  even  the  Government  Printing 
Office  having  been  declared  an  open  shop  to  the  great 
displeasure  of  labor  leaders  who  have  sometimes 
threatened  to  tie  up  the  Government  if  they  could 
not  have  their  way. 

In  some  of  the  cities,  however,  the  municipal 
authorities  have  adopted  the  closed  shop  policy  and 


60  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

discriminated  against  independent  labor  on  the  rep- 
resentations of  labor  leaders,  but  in  every  case  of 
this  kind  which  has  been  appealed  to  the  higher 
courts,  the  friends  of  the  open  shop  have  won. 

There  should  be  no  favoritism  by  public  institu- 
tions or  institutions  operating  under  the  protection 
of  the  State,  in  the  employment  of  labor,  and  they 
should  be  prohibited  under  heavy  penalties  from  em- 
ploying men  as  union  men,  just  as  they  should  be 
prohibited  from  employing  them  because  they  were 
Methodists  or  Baptists. 

The  friends  of  the  open  shop  have  been  too  long 
sleeping  on  their  rights,  and  they  should  awaken  to 
the  danger  that  threatens,  and  press  forward  for 
their  rights  to  the  utmost  limit. 

The  champions  of  the  closed  shops  are  wide  awake 
and  as  vigilant  as  the  bandits  of  the  mountains  and 
ready  to  take  advantage  of  everything  that  may 
turn  to  their  profit. 

They  are  as  aliens  having  no  interest  in  common 
with  the  community,  and  do  not  care  how  much 
damage  they  inflict  on  those  who  employ  labor,  pay 
the  taxes,  and  support  the  commonwealth. 

We  mean  by  the  closed  shop  any  business  that 
employs  only  union  labor;  any  business  whose 
doors  are  closed  to  free  and  independent  labor;  any 
business  that  employs  only  the  union  slaves,  and  is 
unfair  to  all  other  labor. 

The  employer  of  the  closed  shop  buys  his  labor 
from  a  master  of  the  union  slavery  just  as  the  planter 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  61 

often  bought  his  labor  from  the  master  of  negro 
slavery. 

But  we  have  shown  that  the  union  slavery  is  be- 
coming unprofitable  to  employers,  just  as  negro 
slavery  was  becoming  unprofitable  to  employers  up 
to  the  Civil  War.  In  the  struggle  between  the  open 
shop  of  freedom  and  the  closed  shop  of  the  union 
slavery,  one  or  the  other  must  win.  We  have  always 
had  confidence  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  the  cause 
of  freedom,  justice  and  equal  rights. 

An  employer  of  the  open  shop  we  may  suppose  is 
a  member  of  the  employers'  association,  which  has 
recently  been  called  into  existence  for  defense 
against  the  oppressive  demands  and  aggressions  of 
the  unions.  Let  us  illustrate  briefly  the  open  shop 
movement.  It  has  been  the  policy  of  labor  leaders 
to  organize  all  the  workers  of  any  particular  trade 
or  calling,  as  painters  for  instance,  into  a  union,  and 
after  they  are  organized,  if  a  master  painter  refuses 
to  discharge  an  independent  worker  on  its  demand, 
it  at  once  orders  a  strike  of  all  his  union  employees. 
An  attack  from  a  combination  of  this  kind  in  re- 
straint of  trade,  could  ruin  any  single  employer  of 
painters  if  he  refused  to  comply  with  demands  which 
he  considered  unreasonable  and  oppressive.  In  many 
of  the  cities  there  are  now  master  painters  asso- 
ciations for  mutual  defense  against  the  attacks  of 
the  unions,  and  if  any  of  the  journeymen  painters 
in  the  employ  of  any  member  of  the  association  be- 
longs to  the  union,  and  are  ordered  out  on  strike, 
he,  the  member  of  the  association,  may  call  on  the 


62  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

other  members  to  lock  out  all  union  painters  of  their 
establishments  unless  they  give  up  their  allegiance 
to  the  union. 

There  may  be  a  federation  of  the  master  painters 
associations  of  the  different  cities  into  a  national 
association,  so  that  now  a  painters '  union  knows  that 
instead  of  having  a  single  master  painter  to  fight  in 
any  dispute,  it  has  the  master  painters'  association, 
and  if  necessary,  the  national  association  of  master 
painters  to  fight.  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of 
whining  of  labor  leaders  about  employers'  associa- 
tions fighting  them  with  their  own  weapons,  turn- 
ing their  own  guns  upon  them,  but  it  is  too  late  to 
whine,  for  the  open  shop  is  an  evolution,  and  has 
come  to  stay.  It  is  just  as  natural  that  master 
painters  should  stand  together  as  that  journeymen 
painters  should  go  into  a  union  for  aggressive  pur- 
poses. 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  LOVE  OF  POWER. 

We  may  perhaps  safely  assert  that  the  love  of 
Power  is  as  old  as  the  human  race,  and  that  it  is 
also  displayed  in  the  animal  world.  It  has  drenched 
the  earth  with  blood  through  all  the  ages.  It  has 
perhaps  been  essential  to  the  survival  of  the  best 
in  the  struggle  for  life  up  to  the  point  of  commence- 
ment of  the  evolution  of  sympathy  and  the  moral 
sense  in  the  most  developed  members  of  our  race. 
With  the  evolution  of  sympathy  and  the  moral  sense, 
this  love  of  power  should  be  a  continually  vanishing 
quantity  or  trait  as  associated  humanity  approaches 
the  higher  ideals  of  life. 

This  love  of  power  is  shown  by  the  dog  in  mimic 
play  when  he  has  another  dog  down  on  his  back  and 
by  the  throat,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  now  I  have  you 
in  my  power."  Children  show  it  too  when  playing 
war  they  take  each  other  prisoners.  It  was  the  love 
of  power  that  caused  the  Caesars  of  Imperial  Rome 
to  undertake  the  conquest  of  the  world,  and  it  has 
been  the  love  of  power  that  has  caused  the  mighty 
men  of  the  past  to  undertake  the  conquest  of  alien 
peoples  with  its  concomitant  slaughterings  and  cruel- 
ties. This  love  of  power  under  primitive  conditions, 

63 


64  THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY 

of  having  all  others  show  their  subserviency,  sub- 
mission and  slavish  demeanor  on  all  occasions,  has 
been  characteristic  of  the  heads  of  all  institutions, 
religious  as  well  political.  As  we  approach  ideal 
social  conditions,  the  love  of  power  in  the  individual, 
the  desire  of  having  all  others  acknowledge  his  super- 
iority, from  the  despotic  ruler  of  nations,  down  to 
the  head  of  the  family,  must  gradually  diminish. 

In  the  flights  of  their  imaginations  men  holding 
high  positions  of  life  and  death  over  their  fellows, 
have  represented  themselves  as  gods  and  heroes 
with  supernatural  or  superhuman  powers;  as  sur- 
rounded by  all  the  "  pride,  pomp  and  circumstance 
of  glorious  war."  Their  love  of  power,  self-exalta- 
tion, display  of  superiority,  immensurably  out- 
weighed their  interest  in  the  happiness  and  well-be- 
ing of  their  subjects. 

The  representation  of  supreme  power,  of  pride, 
pomp  and  circumstance  having  been  impressed  upon 
their  minds,  conquering  despots  have  endeavored  to 
realize  it  in  fact  at  the  cost  of  thousands  of  lives 
of  men  who  were  submissive  to  their  wills. 

Fear  has  always  made  slaves  of  men,  and  they 
have  been  as  prone  to  worship  power,  as  those  who 
have  become  powerful  have  loved  power  for  the 
distinction  and  exaltation  it  gives.  There  have  been 
many  wise  rulers  who  wielded  their  power  in  the 
interest  of  their  subjects,  as  there  have  been  many 
kind  hearted  good  masters  who  looked  to  the  wel- 
fare of  their  slaves  that  they  might  be  more  efficient 
as  slaves.  But  the  interest  manifested  by  the  ruler 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  65 

in  the  welfare  of  his  subjects,  and  the  interest  man- 
ifested by  the  master  in  the  welfare  of  his  slaves, 
was  never  with  the  view  of  enlarging  their  inde- 
pendence, freedom  and  self-consciousness.  Indeed, 
the  conception  of  independence  and  freedom  of  the 
individual  was  so  completely  absent  in  the  minds  of 
the  ruler  and  master,  that  they  thought  the  subjects 
or  slaves  should  feel  thankful  for  being  permitted 
to  enjoy  a  part  of  the  fruits  of  their  own  energy, 
just  as  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  would  have 
the  members  feel  thankful  for  being  permitted  to 
enjoy  a  part  of  the  wages  paid  to  them  by  employers. 

It  has  been  a  supreme  satisfaction  to  those  whose 
ambition  has  been  to  wield  as  much  power  as  possi- 
ble, to  speak  of  those  upon  whom  their  power  rested, 
as  "  my  subjects,"  "  my  people,"  as  if  they  were 
the  actual  owners  of  the  subjects  or  people  spoken 
of.  Thus  through  long  ages  there  was  a  subject 
class  of  serfs  or  slaves  who  never  thought  of  any- 
thing but  obedience  to  their  masters.  We  wish  to 
educate  all  men  to  a  recognition  and  consciousness 
of  their  individuality,  and  to  assert  their  independ- 
ence and  freedom,  at  the  same  time  yielding  to  all 
others  like  independence  and  freedom. 

This  slavish  instinct,  this  spirit  of  yielding  unques- 
tioned obedience  to  a  superior  wielding  a  power  of 
life  or  death,  has  survived  through  heredity  and  cus- 
tom to  the  present  day,  as  we  see  in  the  blind  obedi- 
ence of  many  of  the  members  of  the  unions  to  the 
suggestions  of  their  leaders.  The  love  of  power  from 
"  the  master  of  a  million  minds  "  of  the  feder- 


66  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

ated  unions,  down  to  the  head  of  the  local,  who 
may  call  a  strike  by  the  snapping  of  his  fingers, 
does  not  fail  to  take  advantage  of  this  unquestioned 
obedience  of  the  members  to  magnify  and  exalt  their 
own  power  and  importance.  We  never  see  any  inti- 
mation from  the  masters  that  they  have  any  inten- 
tion of  using  the  great  power  which  they  wield,  in 
efforts  to  develop  a  sense  of  individuality  and  free- 
dom in  their  slaves,  and  good  will  and  common  fel- 
lowship towards  all  outside  their  ranks.  They,  like 
all  other  despots  who  secure  and  hold  their  power 
by  playing  upon  the  passions,  the  hopes  and  fears 
and  weakness  of  those  whom  they  have  enslaved, 
fear  that  enlightenment,  individuality  and  freedom, 
would  be  fatal  to  their  lease  of  power.  They  will  not 
listen  to  the  altruist  in  his  pleading  for  kindness  and 
gentleness  towards  all  men  without  regard  to  race, 
creed  or  previous  condition. 

To  some  it  appears  conclusive  that  there  is  merit 
in  the  union  from  the  fact  that  the  leaders  secure 
such  devotion  and  loyalty  from  the  enslaved.  When 
we  come  to  examine  the  matter  in  the  light  of  past 
and  current  history,  it  will  be  seen  that  such  extreme 
Io3ralty  and  devotion  to  leaders  are  no  evidence  of 
merit  at  all.  There  are  even  now  among  some  races, 
instances  of  extreme  loyalty  where  the  subject  will 
bare  his  neck  to  the  sword  of  the  ruler  for  decapita- 
tion, saying  that  "  what  the  king  desires  must  be 
done."  We  should  remember  that  the  most  enlight- 
ened part  of  our  race  has  but  recently  emerged 
from  darkness,  ignorance  and  superstition,  serfdom 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  67 

and  slavery,  and  when  we  bear  in  mind  how  prone 
the  average  man  is  to  follow  the  leadership  of  some 
man  of  marked  individuality,  without  carefully  in- 
quiring what  he  stands  for,  as  the  founders  of  Mo- 
hammedism,  Mormonism,  Zionism,  etc.,  we  ought  not 
to  be  surprised  at  the  influence  of  labor  leaders  over 
their  followers.  We  are  all  subject  to  influences 
which  we  may  not  be  able  to  resist,  and  which  may 
mislead  us  if  we  do  not  apply  the  most  rigid  and 
critical  tests  known  to  us.  Our  sense  of  sight  is  not 
always  reliable  in  discriminating  colors;  our  sense 
of  touch  may  mislead  us  in  regard  to  points  of  con- 
tact, and  men  do  things  when  under  mesmeric  or 
hypnotic  influence,  that  they  would  not  do  in  their 
normal  states.  In  the  examinations  of  thousands  of 
men  for  railroad  and  other  service,  where  the  dis- 
crimination of  color  signals  is  required,  it  is  found 
that  about  one  man  in  twenty  is  color-blind.  Oper- 
ators in  hypnotism  or  mesmerism  claim  that  at  least 
one  person  in  ten  may  be  brought  under  the  hypnotic 
influence,  or  mesmeric  sleep,  and  some  operators 
claim  a  larger  proportion. 

Any  one  familiar  with  works  on  the  illusions  of 
the  senses,  knows  that  if  two  points,  as  the  points  of 
a  mechanic's  compass,  are  gently  pressed  against 
the  back  of  the  hand  not  more  than  three-eights  of 
an  inch  apart,  and  the  subject  is  asked  how  many 
points  are  touching,  he  will  invariably  answer  one, 
if  he  is  not  looking  at  the  point  of  contact.  If  the 
subject  knows  nothing  about  circles  of  sensation,  he 
may  think  that  it  is  through  the  mind  of  the  operator 


68  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

that  he  is  made  to  answer  "  one,"  when  in  reality 
two  points  are  touching.  When  sitting  in  our  seat 
in  a  passenger  train  standing  still,  if  a  train  along- 
side of  us  starts,  and  we  look  out  of  our  window 
towards  it,  we  are  apt  to  think  our  own  train  is  mov- 
ing and  cannot  get  rid  of  the  feeling  until  the  mov- 
ing train  passes  us.  When  the  operator  in  hypno- 
tism or  the  leader  of  men  impresses  his  mysteri- 
ous power  or  influence  upon  a  subject,  it  is  often 
impossible  for  him  to  extricate  himself  from  that 
influence,  no  matter  how  injurious  it  may  be  to  him. 
It  is  generally  unfortunate  that  those  who  are  able 
to  impress  their  power  and  influence  upon  others, 
are  no  better  qualified  for  guiding  men  in  their 
proper  relations  to  each  other,  than  those  whom  they 
have  impressed  and  controlled.  Their  love  of  power 
is  not  controlled  by  an  intelligent  and  discriminating 
ambition  to  do  good,  to  have  those  over  whom  they 
exercise  control,  demand  no  more  freedom  of  action 
than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  all  others.  In 
their  ambition  for  power  and  distinction,  they  care 
little  about  equal  rights  and  justice;  but  like  Mo- 
hammed and  his  followers,  they  would  put  to  the 
sword  as  infidels  all  who  dare  to  oppose  them. 

Let  us  quote  an  expression  from  "  the  master  of 
a  million  minds  "  of  the  federated  unions,  who 
never  strikes  or  never  sweats,  as  showing  his  un- 
bounded selfish  love  of  power  at  the  terrible  cost 
of  those  over  whom  he  has  obtained  unjust  control : 

"  But  the  workman  who  toils  for  wages  and  ex- 
pects to  end  his  days  in  the  wage-earning  class,  as 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  69 

conditions  seem  to  point,  it  will  be  a  necessity,  his 
bounden  duty  to  himself,  to  his  family,  to  his  fellow 
men,  and  to  those  who  are  to  come  after  him  to  join 
in  the  union." 

No  absolute  monarch  ever  uttered  expressions 
showing  so  little  respect  for  the  manhood  of  his 
subjects,  and  no  master  ever  held  out  so  little  hope 
to  his  slaves  to  look  for  a  good  time  coming  of  inde- 
pendence and  freedom  and  good  will  among  men  as 
this  unsympathetic  master  holds  out  to  the  union 
slaves  to  become  independent  and  free  and  able  to 
stand  alone.  In  the  pride  of  his  power,  he  is  not  sat- 
isfied in  keeping  his  present  white  slaves  in  chains 
and  in  darkness  and  poverty  by  taking  from  them 
the  wages  of  their  honest  toil,  but  he  would  impress 
upon  them  that  conditions  exist  which  must  keep 
their  children  in  bondage  to  him  or  his  successors, 
and  that  it  is  their  bounden  duty  to  bow  to  him  and 
recognize  that  such  conditions  exist;  that  it  would 
be  treason  to  labor  for  a  man  to  have  a  gleam  of 
hope  of  a  better  time  coming  when  he  can  stand 
erect  and  have  the  respect  of  all  men  which  his  merit 
demands.  Not  one  word  of  hope  does  he  utter  that 
in  the  future  there  will  be  many  opportunities  for 
these  men  and  their  children  to  throw  off  the  slavery 
that  keeps  them  down  and  prevents  them  from  en- 
joying the  wages  of  their  honest  toil. 

The  words  "  independence  and  freedom, "  are 
hateful  expressions  to  such  an  unfeeling  master,  for 
he  knows  that  should  his  white  slaves  get  a  taste 
of  liberty  and  independence,  drink  deep  of  them, 


70  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

that  his  power  would  immediately  vanish.  Like 
all  other  despots  whose  ambition  for  power  knows 
no  bounds,  he  arrogantly  refers  to  himself  as  a 
master,  would  impress  all  independent  workmen  that 
it  is  their  bounden  duty  to  surrender  their  independ- 
ence and  freedom  and  pay  him  heavy  tribute  for 
permission  to  work  and  join  in  the  union.  He  dis- 
cusses the  matter  with  such  authoritativeness  as 
would  naturally  lead  weak-minded  men  who  are  sub- 
missive to  his  will,  to  attempt  to  coerce  independent 
workmen  to  surrender  their  individuality  and  liberty 
and  join  the  union  or  take  the  consequences  of  being 
set  upon  by  the  thugs,  sluggers  and  demons  of  the 
unions. 

With  the  unions  dominated  by  such  a  head,  we 
see  that  its  principles  and  policies  tend  to  the  per- 
secution and  cruelty  of  those  opposed  to  them,  with 
all  the  bitterness  which  characterized  the  leaders  of 
the  Inquisition  in  their  persecution  of  those  who 
claimed  independence  and  freedom  of  thought  in 
religious  matters.  The  masters  of  the  union  slavery 
who  are  so  heartless  in  the  greed  and  pride  of  their 
power  as  to  rob  and  extort  from  the  members  mil- 
lions of  dollars  of  their  wages  every  year,  besides 
robbing  them  of  their  freedom,  and  to  be  untouched 
by  their  sufferings  from  these  great  losses,  could 
hardly  be  expected  to  have  a  spark  of  altruism  or 
sympathy  for  those  who  refuse  to  surrender  their 
independence  and  freedom.  They  would  make  it  a 
crime  for  independent  workmen  to  insist  on  retain- 
ing their  independence  and  freedom,  for  fear  that  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  71 

spirit  of  independence  might  affect  the  union  slaves 
as  the  masters  of  negro  slavery  feared  that  the  talk 
of  freedom  before  his  slaves  increased  their  desire 
for  freedom. 

Indeed  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  have  be- 
come so  intoxicated  with  power  and  importance  that 
they  are  constantly  lobbying  before  Congress  and 
the  State  legislatures  with  demands  for  the  repeal 
of  laws,  which,  if  properly  enforced,  would  restrain 
them  from  lawlessness  and  violence ;  would  restrain 
them  from  intimidating  and  assaulting  independent 
workmen,  and  burning  and  destroying  the  property 
of  employers;  would  restrain  them  from  picketing, 
boycotting  and  ruining  the  business  of  honest  men. 
They  have  become  so  intoxicated  with  power  and 
importance  that,  in  their  arrogance  they  demand  that 
no  restraint  shall  be  placed  upon  the  freedom  of 
action  of  their  pupils  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness 
to  intimidate,  assault,  and  persecute  independent 
workers  to  their  heart 's  content.  They  are  so  intoxi- 
cated with  power  and  importance  that  they  do  not 
hesitate  to  set  up  their  authority  as  paramount  to 
the  authority  of  the  peoples  Government.  In  the 
pride  of  their  power  they  talk  with  fiendish  delight 
of  causing  the  destruction  of  the  business  of  honest 
loyal  men  who  are  unwilling  to  pay  tribute  for  the 
purpose  of  keeping  up  their  disloyal  organization 
and  their  fat  salaries. 

It  could  be  shown  that  the  negro  slaves  were 
treated  better  by  their  masters  than  many  of  the 
union  slaves  are  treated  by  their  masters,  in  their 


72  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

selfish  greed  and  heartless  conduct  in  taking  the 
wages  from  honest  toilers  who  have  been  hoodwinked 
into  surrendering  their  individuality  and  industrial 
freedom  to  become  slaves  of  the  unions. 

This  organization  of  the  unions  that  is  constantly 
exercising  an  authority  paramount  to  the  authority 
of  the  General  Government;  that  keeps  on  hand  a 
war  fund  for  offensive  operations;  that  has  a  na- 
tional executive  head,  a  national  executive  council, 
and  different  executive  departments  and  a  thousand 
organizers  for  directing  the  operations  of  the  organ- 
ization, in  ordering  strikes,  picketing,  boycotting, 
slugging  and  intimidating  innocent  men,  is  a  heavy 
burden  to  the  members  who  are  largely  men  of 
limited  advantages  and  means,  and  whose  wages 
are  barely  sufficient  to  support  their  families,  even 
if  they  were  not  subject  to  loss  of  wages  by  strikes 
and  assessments  for  strike  funds,  besides  the  larger 
amounts  assessed  and  taken  from  their  wages  to 
support  in  luxury  the  parasites  of  the  unions  whose 
principal  business  seems  to  be  to  keep  the  members 
in  a  state  of  hopeless  dependence,  a  state  in  which 
they  will  have  no  desire  to  better  their  condition. 
This  love  and  lust  of  power  manifested  by  officials 
of  the  unions,  has  brought  into  existence  a  system 
of  slavery  that  is  more  tyrannical,  and  in  many  re- 
spects more  deserving  of  reprobation  than  the  iso- 
lated cases  of  peonage  in  the  South,  in  which  those 
who  were  engaged  in  restraining  men  of  their  liberty 
under  this  form  of  slavery,  were  tried  and  convicted 
and  sent  to  the  penitentiary.  This  love  and  lust  of 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  73 

power  and  selfish  greed  of  labor  leaders,  has  so  in- 
toxicated them  with  their  importance  that  they  will 
not  condescend  to  measure  one  man's  rights  by  an- 
other's, nor  listen  to  appeals  for  fairness  in  the  deal- 
ings of  men  with  each  other,  and  are  unaffected  by 
the  bitter  sufferings  of  their  own  people  whom  they 
have  made  miserable  by  absorbing  their  earnings 
and  grinding  the  manhood  out  of  them. 

They  are  not  responsible  to  any  power  or  constitu- 
ency that  can  call  them  to  account  for  their  miscon- 
duct, and  the  knowledge  of  this  fact,  has  made  them 
so  arrogant  that  they  frequently  defy  the  laws  of  the 
land,  and  denounce  everybody  and  everything  that 
would  in  any  measure  restrain  them  from  picking 
the  pockets  of  poor  laboring  men.  To  make  their 
followers  believe  that  they  are  doing  something  in 
the  interest  of  organized  labor,  they  endeavor  to 
secure  a  monopoly  of  labor  for  the  unions  by  keep- 
ing up  a  bitter  war  on  independent  workers,  and 
in  many  instances  have  succeeded  in  forcing  wages 
above  the  normal  level  but  the  amount  paid  for  wages 
above  the  normal  level  is  more  than  swept  away 
by  loss  of  wages  by  strikes,  and  assessments  for 
strike  funds,  and  the  still  larger  amounts  taken  from 
the  wages  of  members  to  support  the  masters  and 
expensive  staffs  and  employees  of  the  organization. 

Every  man  who  is  able  to  stand  alone  as  the  peer 
and  equal  of  his  fellows,  has  no  need  of  the  union, 
and  every  man  who  is  not  able  to  stand  alone,  should 
be  fully  protected  in  his  rights,  and  allowed  to  enjoy 
his  wages  with  his  family,  instead  of  being  plundered 


74  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

and  robbed  by  rapacious  masters  who  are  without 
sympathy  or  gentleness  towards  any  class  of  unfor- 
tunate men,  particularly  those  whom  they  have  en- 
slaved. Very  liberal  laws  have  been  enacted  by 
nearly  all  the  states  to  secure  to  every  laboring 
man  the  payment  of  his  wages,  and  laws  equally 
liberal  should  be  enacted  to  secure  to  him  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  wages,  laws  that  would  make  it  a  mis- 
demeanor punishable  by  fine  for  any  one  to  take 
any  part  of  his  wages  without  giving  him  a  tangible 
equivalent.  Think  of  it,  to  gratify  the  love  of  power 
and  selfish  greed  of  a  few  thousand  labor  agitators 
and  masters  of  the  union  slavery,  a  million  of  the 
poorest  men  in  this  country,  are  obliged  to  yield  up 
yearly  millions  of  dollars  of  their  wages,  and  to 
lose  other  millions  in  loss  of  wages  by  strikes.  We 
have  heard  a  great  deal  about  "  grinding  toil  "  and 
11  sweat  shops  "  imposed  upon  the  poor  laborer  by 
his  employer,  but  we  have  not  heard  the  charge  that 
the  employer  ever  refuses  to  pay  the  poor  man  for 
his  labor.  One  is  tempted  to  ask,  what  do  the  men 
who  never  strike  and  never  sweat,  know  or  care 
about  "grinding  toil  or  sweat  shops"  of  laboring 
men  except  for  the  purpose  of  fleecing  them  of  their 
wages?  Of  course  intelligent  workers  will  not  be 
influenced  by  such  frothy  teachings  of  hate  and 
envy. 

The  masters  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  union  slavery,  like  those  who  con- 
trolled the  principles  and  policies  of  negro  slavery, 
seem  to  challenge  the  loud  roaring  thunders  of  Jove 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  75 

and  the  blasting  fires  of  his  lightnings,  in  their  mad 
arrogance  in  trampling  upon  the  rights  of  nine-tenths 
of  the  people  to  hold  and  strengthen  the  power  which 
they  have  been  wielding  to  the  detriment  of  all 
classes  in  this  country.  They  are  so  blinded  by  envy, 
greed  and  selfishness  that  they  care  nothing  for 
public  policy  or  for  the  public  good,  but  would 
everywhere  and  under  all  conditions  enforce  a  policy 
of  rule  or  ruin  in  the  interest  of  their  factions.  They 
are  sometimes  very  bold  in  their  methods  of  profit- 
ing by  their  positions  and  power.  They  may  call  a 
strike  of  the  men  working  for  a  contracting  em- 
ployer, and  then  have  one  of  their  confidential  agents 
approach  the  employer  with  a  hint  that  for  so  many 
hundreds  or  thousands  of  dollars  the  strike  will  be 
called  off.  Of  course  the  public  can  never  know 
to  what  extent  this  kind  of  blackmail  of  the  unions 
is  carried  on,  but  now  and  then  the  hold-up  is  so 
boldly  done  that  the  matter  gets  into  the  courts  and 
the  scheme  fully  exposed  to  the  chagrin  of  labor 
leaders.  Members  may  go  to  the  masters  and  tell 
them  that  they  have  wives  and  children  to  take  care 
of  and  need  every  cent  of  their  wages,  but  such 
appeals  are  all  to  no  purpose  if  the  master  in  his 
automobile  feels  that  the  employer  will  yield  to  his 
blackmailing  demand.  If  pressed  for  a  reason  by 
the  members  for  calling  the  strike,  the  master  can 
state  that  he  has  found  that  there  is  a  scab  on  the 
job,  even  if  he  has  to  hire  one.  No  amount  of  suffer- 
ing of  the  families  of  members  from  loss  of  wages, 
appeals  to  the  conscience  of  the  selfish  master  when 


76 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 


he  is  assured  of  success  in  holding  up  his  victim  for 
the  "  dough. "  It  is  strange  that  the  more  intelligent 
members  cannot  see  that  they  are  used  by  the  masters 
for  a  system  of  blackmailing  by  which  they  are  made 
to  suffer  loss  of  wages  as  injurious  to  them  as  the 
extortion  of  money  from  the  employer  is  injurious 
to  him.* 


*See  proceedings  of  trial  of  Martin  B.  Madden,  et  al.,  Labor  leader, 
Chicago,    in   Judge    McSurely's    Court,    May    19,    1909. 


CHAPTER  V. 
PRIMITIVE  IDEALS  OF  THE  UNIONS. 

We  have  only  to  look  at  the  reactionary  conduct 
of  the  union  and  its  representatives  to  become  im- 
pressed that  its  ideals  are  substantially  the  same  as 
men  living  under  very  primitive  conditions,  condi- 
tions under  which  only  tribal  relations  were  known, 
and  when  rights,  as  we  understand  the  word,  had 
no  definite  meaning.  For  purposes  of  offence  and 
defence  all  members  of  the  tribe  were  obliged  to 
join  their  efforts,  and  in  their  relations  to  each  other, 
all  were  on  an  equality  except  the  chief  who  wielded 
authority.  Socialism  in  its  purest  form  then  ex- 
isted. There  was  some  appreciation  of  the  fact  by 
the  chief  that  if  the  members  of  the  tribe  injured 
each  other  by  violence  that  it  would  weaken  it  in 
ability  to  hold  its  own  in  conflict  with  other  tribes. 

The  arrow  makers  and  the  makers  of  fishing  gear 
did  not  combine  and  defy  the  laws  or  customs  of  the 
tribe  and  declare  that  no  other  members  of  the 
tribe  should  engage  in  the  manufacture  of  those 
products  and  dispose  of  them  as  they  might  see  fit. 
As  far  as  may  be  ascertained  from  the  history  of  the 
union,  and  the  current  expressions  of  its  leaders,  it 
is  utterly  indifferent  about  the  conduct  of  its  mem- 
bers weakening  the  society  of  which  it  forms  a  part, 

77 


78  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

even  in  the  face  of  foreign  invasion,  so  that  it  is 
able  to  accomplish  its  selfish  ends.  The  sentiments 
of  loyalty,  sympathy  and  common  fellowship  and 
interests,  which  should  bind  the  units  of  every  social 
aggregate  together,  and  are  the  source  of  its 
strength,  are  completely  wanting  in  the  union. 

It  cares  nothing  about  the  health  and  strength 
of  other  parts  of  the  social  organism,  nor  how  much 
they  suffer  from  injustice  and  aggressions  of  others, 
so  that  it  gets  for  its  part  of  the  general  stock  of 
nourishment  and  comforts,  enough  to  waste  as  much 
as  it  uses.  Its  highest  ideal  of  life  in  this  world, 
or  its  happy  hunting-ground  in  the  next  world, 
appears  to  be  a  state  of  existence  in  which  there  are 
employers  against  whom  it  may  pick  grievances  and 
demand  advance  in  wages,  or  discharge  of  independ- 
ent workers;  a  state  in  which  there  are  no  police- 
men or  peace  officers  to  interfere  when  two  or  more 
unionists  assault  a  single  independent  worker  and 
beat  him  to  death  or  into  insensibility,  or  put  him  to 
flight  with  many  bruises  from  sticks,  stones  or  mis- 
siles, because  he  desires  to  make  a  living  without 
surrendering  his  independence  and  freedom  and  be- 
come a  slave  to  masters  who  could  have  no  other  than 
a  selfish  interest  in  him;  a  state  in  which  there  are 
no  courts  to  issue  injunction  or  restraining  orders  to 
prevent  lawless  unionists  from  destroying  the  prop- 
erty of  employers  and  independent  workers.  This 
chronic  pessimism  of  the  union  indicates  bad  diges- 
tion that  keeps  it  in  that  sour,  gloomy  mood  which 
prevents  a  ray  of  sunshine  striking  it  and  warming 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  79 

it  into  active,  healthy  life  which  would  enable  it  to 
see  some  good  in  the  world  outside  of  its  own  narrow 
selfishness.  It  seems  to  enjoy  bad  health,  that  is, 
it  seems  to  get  a  kind  of  grim  pleasure  and  satis- 
faction out  of  creating  industrial  disturbances  with 
resulting  strikes,  riots,  bloodshed,  and  destruction 
of  property.  We  have  seen  no  evidence  that  its 
ideals  of  life  ever  rise  above  these  conditions,  or 
that  it  regards  life  as  worth  living,  that  is,  a  form 
of  social  life  that  would  limit  the  liberty  of  each  by 
the  life  liberty  of  all,  and  in  which  every  man  re- 
spects the  equal  rights  of  all  others.  This  dire  pes- 
simism, this  failure  to  see  any  hope  of  improvement 
in  the  future,  or  anything  good  and  beautiful  in 
others  outside  of  itself  is  due  to  supreme  selfishness 
and  want  of  sympathy  and  common  fellowship  and 
interest  with  all  members  of  the  community. 

We  mean  by  ideal,  a  mental  representation  or 
picture  of  the  conditions  and  relations  to  which  we 
would  like  to  attain  and  as  the  goal  towards  which 
we  should  direct  our  efforts.  In  the  lower  races  of 
men,  their  ideals  are  indefinite  and  extend  in  time 
and  space  scarcely  beyond  their  immediate  wants. 
If  they  suffer  from  thirst  they  may  have  a  mental 
representation  of  water  somewhere  with  which  to 
quench  their  thirst.  If  they  suffer  from  hunger  they 
may  have  mental  representations  of  the  chase  and 
the  acts  they  will  likely  go  through  in  securing 
game  with  which  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  hunger. 
But  these  men  of  the  lower  races,  like  the  Bushmen, 
who  do  not  count  higher  than  the  fingers  on  one 


80  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

hand,  and  live  in  small  groups,  do  not  have  ideals 
extending  far  enough  in  space  and  time  to  induce 
them  to  lay  up  food  to-day,  when  it  is  plentiful, 
that  it  may  be  used  the  next  moon  when  food  might 
be  scarce.  Their  conceptions  of  space  and  time  are 
of  the  narrowest  kind,  so  narrow  indeed  that  they 
do  not  to-day  provide  for  their  wants  very  far  into 
the  future.  They  have  no  ideals  representing  their 
wants  next  year,  or  in  old  age,  to  be  about  the  same 
as  to-day,  and  they  do  not  adjust  their  acts  to  ends 
having  in  view  the  providing  for  their  wants  at  a 
definite  future  time.  They  do  not  plan  to  do  certain 
things  to-day  that  will  bring  about  given  results 
to-morrow,  or  next  moon,  or  next  year,  and  they 
have  no  definite  conceptions  of  rights  as  we  under- 
stand the  word.  Indeed  there  is  no  evidence  that 
they  have  any  definite  ideal  of  life,  meaning  by  ideal 
a  conception  of  life  better  than  the  life  one  is  living. 
When  we  come  to  men  more  advanced  in  intelli- 
gence and  having  tribal  organization,  we  find  that 
they  have  more  definite  ideals  of  benefits  to  be  de- 
rived by  postponing  the  satisfaction  of  certain  pres- 
ent desires.  After  successful  chase  it  might  dawn 
upon  the  mind  of  the  savage  that  it  would  be  bene- 
ficial to  him  to  postpone  the  satisfaction  of  his  desire 
to  eat  his  fresh  meat,  in  order  that  he  might  use  up 
his  old  meat  that  would  likely  spoil  if  kept  over. 
If  he  lives  in  a  climate  subject  to  great  changes  of 
temperature  with  the  changing  of  the  seasons,  he 
may  have  an  ideal  or  mental  picture  of  recurring 
scarcity  of  food  during  the  severe  cold  of  the  winters, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  81 

and  provide  against  the  scarcity  by  laying  up  food 
when  game  is  most  easily  secured.  His  mental  vision 
is  narrow,  his  language  imperfect  and  incapable  of 
expressing  complex  thoughts  if  he  had  them,  and  he 
has  no  definite  ideals  of  life  very  different  from  the 
life  which  he  is  living,  and  to  which  he  is  adapted. 
But  after  recurring  conflicts  between  small  groups 
of  men,  and  the  consolidation  of  gens  into  tribes, 
and  of  tribes  into  nations,  the  mental  horizon  of 
men  gradually  expand,  and  new  ideals  grow  up  to 
meet  the  changed  conditions. 

Let  us  take  the  young  thrifty  farmer  of  to-day, 
and  the  most  prominent  features  of  his  ideals  of  life 
are,  that  he  may  in  a  few  years  have  the  best  stocked 
farm  in  his  neighborhood;  that  he  may  each  recur- 
ring year,  raise  abundant  crops  of  everything  that 
he  has  planted  and  sown,  and  receive  fair  prices  for 
all  his  surplus  products;  that  when  he  shall  have 
reached  the  evening  of  life  he  may  have  plenty  of 
everything  to  enable  him  and  his  family  to  live  the 
balance  of  his  days  in  ease  and  comfort,  and  that 
when  he  comes  to  close  his  earthly  career,  he  may 
look  back  upon  a  life  well  and  honorably  spent,  and 
leave  unto  his  children  a  name  that  will  be  revered, 
and  the  example  of  a  life  worth  emulating.  We  may 
suppose  that  a  plan  or  ideal  of  life  is  gradually 
formed  in  the  mind  of  every  intelligent  business  and 
professional  man  who  hopes  to  realize  it  so  that  he 
may  be  able  to  retire  from  his  business  or  profes- 
sion before  he  reaches  an  age  when  life  shall  become 
a  burden.  In  the  main  the  man  who  relies  on  his 


82  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

own  independence  and  freedom  in  his  struggle  for 
life,  is  almost  certain  to  make  his  ideal  pictures  turn 
out  real  ones.  We  sometimes  call  these  ideals  the 
building  of  air  castles,  that  is,  the  planning  what  we 
are  going  to  have  in  the  future  in  the  way  of  home 
and  comforts  and  pleasant  surroundings. 

This  building  of  air  castles,  this  formation  of  ideals 
or  plans  for  the  future  to  be  worked  out,  is  not  to 
be  discouraged,  for  in  this  country  where  every  man 
has  a  chance  to  show  the  metal  that  is  in  him;  he 
may  commence  at  the  lowest  round  of  the  ladder, 
and  by  energy  and  perseverance,  rise  to  fame  and 
fortune.  There  is  nothing  in  the  teachings  of  the 
leaders  of  the  unions  showing  that  they  ever  sug- 
gest to  the  members  that  they  should  have  ideals 
extending  from  the  present  into  the  distant  future, 
ideals  in  which  every  day  would  mark  a  step  leading 
to  something  better  the  next,  which  they  should  en- 
deavor to  realize,  and  towards  which  they  should 
direct  their  efforts  to  making  each  ideal  a  reality. 
These  leaders  seem  to  have  no  ideal  plan  by  which 
they  may  hope  to  develop  and  bring  out  the  best 
qualities  of  a  good  citizen  in  every  member,  and  to 
improve  the  relations  between  members  and  em- 
ployers each  year  until  the  cause  of  strife  between 
them  shall  be  removed,  and  until  each  side  shall  de- 
mand no  more  rights,  no  more  privileges,  no  more 
freedom  of  action,  than  it  is  willing  to  concede  to 
the  other.  Those  who  were  familiar  with  slavery 
know  that  the  most  cherished  ideal  of  the  slave  was 
an  ideal  condition  of  freedom  which  he  hoped  would 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  83 

come  to  him  sometime  in  the  future;  but  we  never 
have  an  intimation  from  labor  leaders  that  they 
ever  encourage  the  members  to  have  an  ideal  repre- 
senting them  as  breaking  away  from  the  bondage  of 
the  unions  and  becoming  independent  and  free ;  free 
to  act  on  their  own  initiative;  free  to  sympathize 
and  assist  in  lifting  up  others  more  unfortunate  than 
themselves  to  self -consciousness  of  their  manhood, 
without  demanding  of  them  a  union  card,  or  any 
other  sign  of  former  slavery.  Labor  leaders  do  not 
appear  to  have  ideals  representing  themselves  or 
members  of  the  unions  as  performing  altruistic  acts 
of  any  kind;  acts  beneficial  to  any  one  outside  the 
unions,  or  acts  that  tend  to  bind  men  into  a  brother- 
hood of  common  interests,  mutual  good  will  and  mut- 
ual respect  for  each  others  rights.  We  do  not  find 
after  the  most  careful  consideration  that  they  have 
any  ideals  of  any  kind,  which,  if  realized,  would  tend 
to  raise  human  society  above  the  savage  state.  Their 
most  active  ideals  appear  to  be  that  if  an  independent 
worker  has  a  job,  that  a  walking  delegate  should  be 
sent  around  to  warn  him  to  leave  it,  and  that  if  he 
persists  in  fulfilling  his  contract,  that  two  or  more 
thugs  of  the  union  should  be  sent  to  assault  and 
drive  him  off  or  beat  him  to  death.  We  nowhere 
find  any  evidence  that  they  have  any  higher  ideals 
of  life,  of  justice,  fairness  and  equal  rights  to  others 
than  the  untutored  savage,  or  of  the  violent,  the 
vicious  and  weak-minded  around  us.  An  official 
of  the  union  who  has  presented  to  him  a  picture  or 
ideal  of  the  sufferings  of  the  wives  and  children  of 


84  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

the  members,  if  the  husbands  and  fathers  are  obliged 
to  stop  work  and  go  on  strike,  and  yet  compels  them 
to  do  so,  is  more  heartless  and  destitute  of  the  in- 
stincts of  civilized  man,  than  the  savage  who  tor- 
tures his  captured  enemy.  Institutions  like  men 
must  be  judged  by  their  deeds  and  not  by  their  pro- 
fessions, and  so  we  say  of  unionism,  if  it  has  any  vir- 
tue or  good  in  it,  to  commend  it  to  the  considera- 
tion of  thoughtful  men,  it  has  yet  to  manifest  it. 
Its  unprincipled  and  selfish  leaders  have  collected 
together  a  great  part  of  the  violent,  vicious  and 
weak-minded  of  the  country,  who  cannot  be  said 
to  have  any  definite  ideals  or  morals  and  used  them 
in  such  manner  as  to  become  an  intolerable  nuisance 
and  oppression  to  the  industrious  and  self-respecting 
law-abiding  part  of  nearly  every  community,  espe- 
cially of  the  cities,  a  nuisance  and  oppression  that 
should  at  once  be  checked  by  the  firmness  and  sanity 
of  those  who  love  law  and  order. 

No  man  who  has  the  spirit  of  independence  and 
freedom  in  him;  no  man  who  may  not  be  classed 
with  the  vicious  and  weak-minded,  could  have  the 
infinite  presumption  of  the  walking  delegate  to  order 
another  man  to  stop  work  on  a  job  he  had  engaged 
to  complete,  because  he  did  not  belong  to  the  union. 
When  we  consider  that  the  unions  exist  solely  for  the 
benefit  of  the  masters  whose  salaries  are  never 
stopped,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  never  have 
ideals  worth  striving  for  by  all  classes  of  the  com- 
munity. They  have  put  forward  as  an  ideal  and 
demanded  that  their  ideal  shall  become  a  reality, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  85 

that  municipal  and  state  legislation  shall  discrimin- 
ate in  favor  of  the  unions  and  give  all  employment 
on  public  works,  or  for  the  municipality  or  state, 
to  union  labor,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  union 
labor  constitutes  only  about  one-tenth  of  all  other 
labor,  thus  making  it  a  class  of  special  privileges. 
In  this  they  show  that  they  have  not  only  no  ideal 
of  justice  and  fairness  towards  others ;  but  that  they 
would  have  the  state  and  municipality  act  unjustly 
and  unfairly  to  independent  labor,  or  nine-tenths 
of  labor,  and  those  who  are  the  main  sources  of 
strength  to  the  state. 

The  unions  are  almost  a  minus  quantity  on  the 
tax  rolls  of  every  community,  and  we  have  already 
pointed  out  that  the  loyalty  of  organized  labor  is 
more  than  questionable  and  can  never  be  depended 
upon  by  the  state  in  an  emergency,  particularly  if 
the  trouble  was  connected  with  labor  disturbances. 
Disloyalty  to  the  interests  of  those  whom  it  engages 
to  serve,  is  one  of  the  most  prominent  features  in 
the  history  of  unionism  as  it  has  come  down  to  us. 
An  organization  whose  every  ideal  is  opposed  to  so- 
cial order,  justice  and  morality,  must,  when  its  meth- 
ods and  aims  are  exposed,  arouse  such  sentiment 
against  it  in  the  minds  of  peace-loving  and  law-abid- 
ing people,  as  to  have  the  effect  of  curbing  its  extrav- 
agant and  harmful  pretentious.  There  is  a  constant 
tendency  among  its  officials,  from  the  highest  to  the 
lowest,  to  push  its  unreasonable  demands,  exactions 
and  pretentious,  to  the  utmost  limits  that  com- 
munities will  tolerate.  So  far  as  we  are  able  to  see, 


86  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

their  most  active  ideals  appear  to  be  ruin  and  perse- 
cution, persecution  of  the  most  relentless  kind  of 
those  who  are  opposed  to  their  principles,  policies 
and  methods.  The  ideals  of  the  sea  pirates  of  past 
centuries  did  not  have  in  view  a  more  wanton  de- 
struction of  the  commerce  of  the  seas,  than  have  the 
ideals  of  these  selfish  masters  had  in  view  the  wanton 
destruction  of  the  business  and  commerce  of  the 
country.  All  their  ideals  appear  to  be  destructive  in 
character  instead  of  constructive,  tend  to  tearing 
down  instead  of  building  up,  to  waste  instead  of 
conservation. 

We  have  it  from  the  histories  of  the  times  that  the 
leaders  of  the  Inquisition  exercised  the  inventive 
power  of  their  brains  to  construct  instruments  of  tor- 
ture of  the  most  refined  character,  for  the  purpose 
of  torturing  their  heretical  victims ;  so  the  masters  of 
the  union  slavery  appear  to  be  constantly  cudgelling 
their  brains  to  invent  schemes  for  holding  up,  injur- 
ing and  annoying  their  victims  and  those  having 
dealings  with  them,  and  of  persecuting  to  the  bitter 
end  any  of  their  slaves  who  groan  under  the  bur- 
dens imposed  upon  them,  or  sigh  for  freedom.  Never 
before  in  the  history  of  the  world,  has  there  been 
an  organization  like  the  unions,  made  up  so  largely 
of  the  vicious  and  weak-minded  elements,  which  have 
been  so  completely  controlled  by  masters  of  unde- 
veloped ideals  for  corrupt  and  vicious  purposes. 
An  official  daily  bulletin  of  the  violent  and  unlawful 
acts  of  the  unions  throughout  the  country,  for  which 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  87 

the  masters  should  be  held  responsible,  would  per- 
haps afford  ample  proof  of  our  statement. 

It  certainly  is  not  creditable  to  the  liberty-loving 
men  of  the  country  to  have  tolerated  so  much  of  the 
terrorism,  suffering  and  attendant  losses  which  have 
afflicted  it  year  after  year,  and  which  are  justly 
chargeable  to  the  masters  of  selfish,  primitive  ideals, 
who  fatten  on  the  misfortunes  of  others,  even  of 
their  own  followers.  Thoughtful  men  are  beginning 
to  ask  themselves  if  it  is  not  time  to  have  organized 
intelligence  that  stands  for  law,  order  and  equal 
rights,  to  meet  the  organized  viciousness  and  weak- 
mindedness  of  the  country,  which,  in  the  hands  of 
corrupt  and  reckless  leaders,  are  continually  causing 
serious  disturbances  of  social  order,  and  enormous 
losses  to  the  business  interests  of  the  country.  All 
men  possessing  the  spirit  of  independence,  and  who 
believe  in  industrial  and  commercial  freedom,  should 
have  their  attention  called  to  this  menace  to  their 
liberties;  this  menace  to  the  business  interests  and 
prosperity  of  the  country,  by  organized  viciousness 
and  weak-mindedness  directed  by  men  whose  ideals 
of  social  life  are  scarcely  above  the  ideals  of  socialists 
and  the  natives  of  the  Dark  Continent. 

It  is  hard  enough  for  the  intelligent,  independent, 
freedom-loving,  self-supporting,  altruistic  part  of  the 
community  to  be  taxed  to  provide  for  the  pronounced 
vicious  and  weak-minded,  without  being  constantly 
hampered,  annoyed  and  subjected  to  great  losses 
by  those  only  a  shade  less  weak-minded  and  vicious 
under  the  control  of  vicious  and  unprincipled  men 


88  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

calling    themselves    representatives    of    labor,    and 
claiming  to  act  in  the  name  of  labor. 

We  never  hear  of  labor  leaders  presenting  for  the 
consideration  of  members  of  the  unions  such  ideal 
conditions  as  will  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  only  one  had  grown  before,  but  on  the  con- 
trary they  are  constantly  advocating  and  insisting 
on  bringing  about  conditions  which  must  cause  only 
one  blade  of  grass  to  grow  where  two  had  grown 
before.  They  seem  to  have  no  conception  of  pro- 
gressive ideals ;  no  conception  that  our  race  is  grow- 
ing out  of  its  swaddling  clothes;  no  conception  of 
the  fact  that  their  ideals  belong  to  the  age  of  the 
cave  dwellers  when  our  ancestors  used  the  rudest 
implements  of  stone  for  weapons  of  offense  and  de- 
fense, for  they  never  hold  up  for  the  consideration 
of  their  followers  in  an  approving  manner,  the  desira- 
bility of  introducing  into  a  plant  improved  machin- 
ery, methods  or  processes,  which  would  increase  the 
power  or  capacity  of  a  man  to  turn  out  two,  three 
or  four  times  the  amount  of  a  product  which  he 
had  been  turning  out  with  the  old  and  more  primi- 
tive machinery,  or  older  methods  and  processes.  It 
is  well  known  that  labor  leaders  are  enemies  of  all 
progress,  of  all  improved  machinery,  methods  and 
processes  which  multiply  and  cheapen  all  kinds  of 
products  of  common  use,  and  not  only  bitterly  oppose 
the  introduction  of  such  improved  machinery,  meth- 
ods and  processes,  but  when  they  are  introduced 
into  a  plant,  demand,  and  when  practicable  enforce 
their  demands,  that  the  employer  of  union  labor, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  89 

who  introduces  such  improved  machinery,  methods 
and  processes,  shall  continue  to  employ  two,  three 
or  four  men  to  do  the  work  which  one  man  can  do 
with  the  improved  machinery.  The  primitive  ideals 
of  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery,  would  prevent 
progress  in  every  direction;  would  continue  to  use 
the  primitive  machinery,  methods  and  processes  of 
past  centuries,  for  they  seem  to  think  by  so  doing 
that  it  would  make  more  work  for  union  labor,  and 
more  fat  perquisites  for  labor  leaders.  If  their  primi- 
tive ideals  could  be  bottled  up  and  stored  away  in 
a  museum  like  the  primitive  machinery  which  fits 
such  ideals,  there  could  be  no  ground  for  complaint, 
but  when  we  see  them  constantly  striving  to  make 
their  ideal  pictures  turn  out  realities,  great  harm  is 
done  not  only  to  those  who  work  with  their  hands, 
but  to  all  classes.  We  must  admit  that  progress, 
improved  machinery,  methods  and  processes,  is  bene- 
ficial on  the  average,  or  that  all  progress  is  detri- 
mental to  mankind,  and  that  we  should  return  to 
primitive  conditions.  The  unions  have  never  had  an 
ideal  of  any  kind,  which,  if  realized,  would  be  bene- 
ficial to  our  country,  or  even  to  organized  labor  in 
the  long  run.  Indeed  an  organization  whose  prom- 
inent ideal  is  envy,  hate  and  special  privileges,  hate 
for  everything  progressive,  could  hardly  be  expected 
to  have  an  ideal  worth  striving  for  by  any  man  who 
feels  an  interest  in  the  common  welfare ;  could  hardly 
be  expected  to  have  ideals  of  fraternal  greetings 
between  unionists  and  free,  independent  workers  and 


90  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

of  their  marching  arm  in  arm  in  Labor  Day  proces- 
sions and  on  all  patriotic  occasions. 

There  is  rythm  in  all  motion,  and  there  has  been 
rythm  in  all  progress,  all  evolution,  since  life  ap- 
peared on  the  earth.  In  the  course  of  general  evo- 
lution, retrogression  has  been  as  frequent  as  progres- 
sion, in  all  forms  of  life.  The  Greek  and  Roman 
and  Phoenician  and  many  other  civilizations,  have 
been  extinguished  after  mighty  struggles,  and  other 
civilizations  built  upon  their  ruins.  The  periods  of 
brightness  and  greatness  of  these  civilizations,  after 
the  decadent  forces  became  dominant,  were  suc- 
ceeded by  periods  of  darkness,  anarchy,  and  gloom, 
of  perhaps  equal  length.  Every  man  who  has  studied 
the  history  of  the  growth,  development  and  decad- 
ence of  nations,  must  be  impressed  with  the  mighty 
struggle  now  going  on  between  the  reactionary 
forces  and  influences  of  unionism  and  socialism, 
tending  to  pull  down  and  destroy  all  the  progress 
that  has  been  made  by  our  race,  and  the  progressive 
forces  and  influences  represented  by  those  who  be- 
lieve in  individuality  and  industrial  and  commercial 
freedom,  which  tend  to  build  up  to  higher  ideals, 
our  present  civilization.  When  we  take  into  account 
the  great  numerical  strength  of  the  weak-minded  and 
vicious  elements  of  society,  which  we  may  count  on 
as  being  practically  owned  by  the  reactionary 
leaders  of  unionism  and  socialism,  the  enemies  of 
social  order  and  progress,  we  see  what  a  heavy  bur- 
den the  plain,  level-headed  provident  man  has  to 
bear. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  UNIONS  A  LABOR  TRUST. 

In  the  presidential  campaigns  for  the  last  dozen 
or  more  years,  the  country  from  one  end  to  the  other 
has  rung  with  the  denunciation  of  trusts.  Eminent 
speakers  from  every  political  platform,  including 
the  representatives  of  organized  labor  have  joined  in 
the  outcry.  Every  capitalistic  trust  has  been  repre- 
sented as  a  great  octopus  whose  outstretched  ten- 
tacles were  constantly  drawing  into  its  ravenous 
maw  the  ruined  business  of  countless  small  concerns, 
and  raising  the  prices  of  commodities  to  unheard  of 
heights,  thereby  increasing  the  cost  of  living  beyond 
all  former  times.  That  the  trusts  deserve  a  good 
deal  of  the  denunciation  hurled  at  them,  is  probably 
true;  but  it  appears  that  the  labor  union  part  of 
those  chasing  the  octopus,  are  making  a  great  noise 
to  distract  attention  from  themselves,  the  most  op- 
pressive of  all  trusts.  We  understand  that  a  trust 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  are  speaking  of  it,  is  a  com- 
bination of  capital  or  labor  in  restraint  of  trade.  It 
will  be  well  to  give  a  more  detailed  definition  of 
the  word  as  here  used.  We  may  then  define  a  trust 
as  a  combination  in  which  several  men  combine 
their  capital  or  labor  for  the  purpose  of  controlling 
the  output  and  sale  of  a  given  product,  of  fixing  the 

91 


92  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

price  of  the  product  and  the  wages  of  labor,  and 
of  destroying  all  competition  in  the  manufacture 
and  sale  of  the  product  and  of  labor.  That  is,  those 
who  refuse  to  go  into  the  combination  are  to  be 
undersold  in  the  market  until  the  selling  of  the  prod- 
uct becomes  so  unprofitable  that  they  are  obliged 
to  go  out  of  business.  When  the  trust  crushes  all 
opposition,  destroys  all  competition,  it  then  raises 
the  price  of  the  product  to  whatever  point  it  may 
consider  expedient,  taking  into  account  the  temper  of 
the  public  to  stand  the  advance.  By  its  methods  of 
getting  control  of  the  market,  the  trust  not  only 
makes  the  public  pay  for  the  losses  it  sustains  while 
destroying  competition ;  but  it  also  makes  the  public 
pay  the  profits  of  the  trust  after  competition  has 
been  destroyed.  Of  course  an  individual  might  pos- 
sess sufficient  capital  to  control  the  output  and  sale 
of  a  given  product;  might  be  able  to  buy  out  a 
sufficient  number  of  the  interests  of  those  selling  the 
product,  to  drive  the  others  out  of  business  by  under- 
selling them,  by  competition,  and  thus  secure  con- 
trol of  the  market,  and  afterwards  fix  the  price. 

Now  the  unions  are  labor  trusts,  for  they  are  com- 
binations of  men  in  restraint  of  trade  of  various 
kinds ;  in  restraint  of  independent  labor  for  the  pur- 
pose of  controlling  the  labor  market  and  raising  the 
price  of  labor.  The  only  difference  between  a  labor 
trust  and  a  capitalistic  trust,  is,  that  the  labor  trust 
endeavors  to  keep  its  competitors  out  of  the  market 
by  force  and  intimidation,  whereas  the  capitalistic 
trust  first  destroys  its  competitors  by  underselling 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  93 

them  in  the  market  and  then  raising  the  price  of 
the  product  so  as  to  make  enormous  profits.  The 
labor  trust  is  as  soulless  and  heartless  as  the  capital- 
istic trust,  and  its  leaders  and  members  care  no  more 
for  the  sufferings  and  hardships  of  the  independent 
workers  and  their  families,  and  of  all  men  outside 
the  ranks  of  the  unions,  than  the  members  of  the 
capitalistic  trust  care  for  the  sufferings  and  hard- 
ships of  the  men  and  their  families,  whose  business 
they  have  destroyed,  by  unfair  competition  in  order 
that  they  might  rob  the  public  at  large  to  satisfy 
their  greedy  ambition  for  wealth.  When  a  trust 
secures  control  of  the  market  for  the  sale  of  a  given 
product  of  common  necessity,  it  may  raise  the  price 
of  the  article  to  any  point  desired,  and  the  public 
has  sometimes  been  helpless  to  protect  itself  against 
the  extortion.  When  the  union  labor  trust  has  se- 
cured control  of  the  labor  market  for  furnishing  a 
particular  kind  of  labor,  it  has  often  by  its  unrea- 
sonable and  exorbitant  demands  been  ruinous  to 
those  who  were  obliged  to  use  such  labor. 

If  our  definition  of  a  labor  trust  is  correct,  it 
has  no  more  right  to  exist  than  a  capitalistic  trust, 
and  if  we  admit  that  it  is  the  proper  function  gov- 
ernment to  protect  each  individual  in  his  equal  rights 
of  life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happiness,  neither  has 
a  right  to  exist.  An  individual  who  is  prevented  by 
force  and  intimidation  of  others  from  carrying  out 
his  plans  of  life,  under  the  law  of  equal  freedom,  is 
not  equally  free  with  those  others  to  enjoy  the  equal 
rights  which  should  be  guaranteed  to  him,  and  which 


94  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

our  Government  is  pledged  to  guarantee  to  him.  So 
also  those  whose  business  has  been  destroyed  by  the 
methods  of  the  capitalistic  trust,  are  not  equally  free 
to  buy  the  product  controlled  by  the  trust  and  sell 
it  at  a  profit  like  the  trust,  or  at  the  profit  which 
normal  competition  would  bring.  We  do  not 
question  the  right  of  men  to  combine  for  the 
purpose  of  selling  their  labor  for  all  it  is  worth 
in  the  market,  but  we  contend  that  under  the  law 
of  equal  freedom,  they  have  no  right  in  order  to 
secure  a  monopoly  of  labor  and  fix  the  wage  scale, 
to  prevent  other  men  who  are  unwilling  to  surrender 
their  independence  and  freedom  and  join  them, 
from  competing  with  them  in  the  labor  market. 
For  the  unions  to  prevent  by  force  and  intimidation, 
independent  workers  from  competing  with  them  in 
the  labor  market,  is  to  exercise  greater  freedom 
of  action  than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  others. 
In  the  National  and  State  Platforms  of  the  leading 
political  parties,  we  find  that  trusts,  unlawful  com- 
binations of  capital,  are  vigorously  denounced;  but 
the  statesmen  who  write  these  platforms,  and  who 
are  equally  familiar  with  the  evils  of  the  labor  trust, 
are  not  courageous  enough  to  denounce  it,  and 
point  out  that  it  exists  for  the  purpose  of  using  force 
and  intimidation  to  prevent  independent  workmen 
from  securing  employment.  We  find  that  while  the 
members  of  the  capitalistic  trust,  or  combinations 
of  such  trusts,  share  equally  in  the  profits  from  the 
combination,  considering  amount  of  capital  invested, 
in  the  labor  trust  onlv  the  officials  are  beneficiaries 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  95 

of  the  combination  to  control  and  fix  the  wage  scale.* 
Looking  back  over  the  history  of  the  labor  trust  for  a 
generation,  probably  no  honest  thinking  man  will 
claim  that  the  members  of  organized  labor  through- 
out the  country  are  any  better  off  this  year  than 
they  were  last  year  or  the  year  before.  It  still  has 
leaders  whose  selfishness  and  greed  makes  them 
wholly  unconscious  of  modern  progress ;  who  do  not 
appreciate  that  with  the  increasing  intelligence  of 
men,  there  has  grown  up  among  them  a  spirit  of 
independent  and  freedom  which  makes  them  keenly 
sensitive  to  being  held  up  by  so-called  labor  leaders 
who  wish  to  have  them  surrender  their  independence 
and  freedom  for  the  purpose  of  controlling  them  for 
selfish  ends,  as  weaklings  and  incompetents  who  are 
unable  to  attend  to  their  own  business.  Even  if 
there  was  merit  in  the  labor  trust,  which  there  is  not, 
it  would  suffer  from  not  having  its  weak  spots 
pointed  out  by  outside  intelligent  criticism.  It  is 
impossible  from  an  ethical  standpoint  to  regard  with 
favor  any  organization  like  the  unions  which  re- 
quires its  members  to  surrender  their  independence 
and  freedom  on  joining  it,  and  which  claims  their 
allegiance  to  it  as  paramount  to  their  allegiance  to 
the  peoples  government  which  gives  them  independ- 
ence and  freedom.  It  is  the  policy  of  a  capitalistic 
trust  after  it  has  destroyed  competition,  not  only  to 


When  we  take  into  account  the  loss  of  wages  by  strikes,  and  the 
amounts  taken  from  members  to  meet  assessments  and  fines  the  net 
wage  is  so  small,  that  membership  cannot  justly  be  considered  bene- 
ficial. 


96  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

make  back  all  it  lost  in  destroying  competitors,  but 
to  fix  the  price  of  the  product  it  sells  so  as  to  make 
a  handsome  profit  while  it  controls  the  market; 
whereas,  the  labor  trust  can  not  hope  to  make  back 
anything  it  loses  in  a  strike,  it  may  order  to  compel 
an  employer  to  discharge  his  independent  workmen 
and  unionize  his  plant,  or  to  use  the  current  expres- 
sion, make  it  a  closed  shop.  In  this  progressive  age 
when  there  is  an  increasing  assertion  of  independ- 
ence and  freedom  among  men,  and  an  increasing 
demand  for  equal  rights  and  exact  justice,  we  ought 
to  look  for  vigorous  denunciation  of  all  trusts  in 
restraint  of  trade  and  of  equal  rights.  There  is  no 
reason  why  the  labor  trust  should  be  excepted  and 
given  special  privileges.  All  men  suffer  who  sur- 
render their  independence  and  freedom  and  fail  to 
demand  and  insist  upon  their  rights,  and  the  equal 
rights  of  their  fellows. 

Let  us  briefly  look  at  the  evils  of  a  commercial 
trust  with  which  nearly  every  one  is  familiar,  who 
has  lived  in  any  city  of  the  first  class  in  recent  years. 
In  nearly  all  the  cities  of  the  first  class  in  this  coun- 
try up  to  a  few  years  ago,  there  were  several  inde- 
pendent ice  companies  who  sold  their  ice  in  competi- 
tion with  each  other  and  made  profits  sufficient  for 
each  to  get  a  good  living  out  of  the  business.  But 
in  recent  years  the  trust  idea  has  entered  the  minds 
of  the  ice  dealers  of  some  of  the  cities,  who,  not  sat- 
isfied with  the  slow  methods  of  getting  rich  by  small 
profits,  have,  by  consolidation  or  agreement,  at- 
tempted, and  sometimes  succeeded,  in  controlling  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  97 

price  of  ice,  by  buying  out  the  smaller  dealers,  or 
underselling  them,  forced  them  out  of  business,  and 
then  having  a  monopoly,  fixed  the  price  of  ice  so  as 
to  make  enormous  profits,  causing  great  hardships 
to  the  people.  These  unlawful  combinations  are 
sometimes  dissolved  by  the  courts,  but  generally 
not  until  they  have  exacted  a  heavy  tribute  from 
the  people.  Now  the  policy  of  the  union  labor  trust, 
which,  by  assaults  and  intimidation,  prevents  the 
independent  worker  from  carrying  out  his  plans  of 
life  by  working  for  whom  he  will  and  under  such 
terms  as  may  please  him,  is  just  as  injurious  to  the 
public  as  the  conduct  of  the  ice  trust  or  any  other 
trust  in  restraint  of  trade.  In  its  efforts  to  control  the 
labor  market  and  monopolize  labor,  the  labor  trust 
has  been  wasteful  of  its  own  energy  and  resources 
and  frequently  brought  disaster  and  ruin  to  large 
sections  of  the  country.  Its  managers  and  business 
agents  by  their  pig-headed  policy  of  encouraging 
and  countenancing  strikes,  have  entailed  upon  its 
membership  losses  of  nearly  twenty  millions  dollars 
a  year  besides  causing  the  public  and  employers 
far  greater  losses.  It  has  the  distinction  of  being 
one  of  the  very  few  trusts  in  the  world  that  is  not 
beneficial  to  those  backing  it  except  to  its  officials, 
whose  interests  are  distinct  from  the  members.  It 
is  a  trust  based  upon  passions,  prejudices  and  hatred 
for  those  opposed  to  its  principles  and  policies,  and 
whose  members,  while  under  hypnotic  influence  or 
suggestion,  were  induced  to  surrender  their  independ- 


98  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ence  and  freedom  to  their  own  detriment  and  to 
the  detriment  of  the  community. 

There  are  many  instances  in  which  the  Federal 
and  State  courts  have  held  that  the  acts  of  trades 
unions  were  illegal  and  in  restraint  of  trade  or  inter- 
state commerce.  Indeed  some  of  the  officials  of  the 
unions  admit  that  their  organization  is  a  monopoly 
or  labor  trust  and  desires  to  control  and  fix  the  price 
of  all  the  labor  of  the  country,  and  determine  who 
shall  and  who  shall  not  be  permitted  to  work.  The 
evils  of  the  Standard  Oil  Trust,  the  Beef  Trust,  the 
Steel  Trust,  or  any  other  trust,  may  be  regarded  as 
mere  drops  in  the  ocean  of  crime  chargeable  to  the 
union  labor  trust.  The  officials  of  these  capitalistic 
trusts  do  not,  like  the  officials  of  the  labor  trust, 
teach  their  members  or  stockholders  to  hate  all  men 
opposed  to  their  methods.  They  do  not  teach  a  relig- 
ion of  hate  for  everything  outside  their  own  inter- 
ests. On  the  contrary,  many  of  those  interested  in 
the  vast  capitalistic  combinations  are  men  of  highly 
altruistic  natures,  are  selfish  for  the  purpose  of  be- 
stowing benefactions  upon  their  fellowmen.  Who 
ever  heard  of  a  labor  leader  bestowing  a  benefaction 
upon  any  one,  or  doing  anything  for  the  general  wel- 
fare ?  It  is  perhaps  a  fact  that  the  labor  trust  is  the 
only  trust  in  the  world  except  the  Dog  Trust  of 
Constantinople,  that  endeavors  to  drive  off  or  destroy 
its  competitors  who  wish,  as  independent  workers, 
to  have  a  share  of  the  work  of  the  world.  There 
was  a  time  when,  if  one  or  two  stray  dogs  of  any 
quarter  of  the  city  of  Constantinople  dared  to  invade 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  99 

the  feeding  territory  of  the  dog  trust  of  another 
quarter  of  the  city  where  the  dogs  foraged  in  packs 
with  leaders,  the  trust  dogs  fiercely  attacked  the 
independent  dogs  and  drove  them  off  or  destroyed 
them,  just  as  the  members  of  the  labor  trust  attack 
and  endeavor  to  drive  off  or  destroy  all  independent 
workers.  There  were  many  points  in  favor  of  the 
dog  trust,  as  compared  with  the  labor  trust,  as  far 
as  viciousness  of  conduct  is  concerned.  The  conduct 
of  the  capitalistic  trusts  is  selfish,  but  peaceable. 
By  the  destruction  of  competition  the  Standard  Oil 
Trust  may  raise  the  price  of  oil  one-half  cent  per 
gallon  above  the  price  of  what  it  would  be  under 
normal  competition,  which  rich  and  poor  alike  must 
pay.  In  its  efforts  to  destroy  competition  and  con- 
trol the  labor  market  and  fix  the  scale  of  wages,  the 
labor  trust  is  not  only  constantly  trying  to  raise 
the  price  of  labor  of  its  members,  which  constitute 
only  about  ten  per  cent,  of  the  workers  of  the  coun- 
try, above  the  normal  level  under  competition ;  but  it 
is  also  trying  to  deprive  ninety  laborers  out  of  every 
hundred,  of  the  privilege  of  working  at  all  for  wages. 
We  not  only  find  those  who  control  and  direct  the 
principles  and  policies  of  the  labor  trust,  laying  claim 
to  all  the  work  to  be  done,  but  of  arrogating  to 
themselves  the  privilege  of  fixing  the  price  for  doing 
the  work,  leaving  to  the  employers  nothing  to  say 
about  it  except  to  pay  the  bills.  The  officials  of  the 
labor  trust  have  such  complete  control  over  the  union 
slaves  that  they  propose  to  make  it  as  difficult  for 
free  and  independent  labor  to  have  a  chance  to  earn 


100  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

a  living,  as  the  masters  of  negro  slavery  made  it 
difficult  for  free  white  labor  to  earn  a  living  in  the 
South  prior  to  the  Civil  War.  It  is  indeed  surprising 
that  men  of  ordinary  intelligence,  like  the  labor  trust 
leaders,  should  have  the  audacious  presumption  to 
undertake  to  corral  and  organize  the  vicious  and 
weak-minded  elements  of  the  country  for  the  pur- 
pose of  enslaving  all  other  classes  and  making  them 
pay  heavy  tribute  to  the  labor  trust  magnates.  But 
we  may  readily  believe  that  men  like  the  labor  trust 
officials  who  will  deliberately  rob  and  plunder  poor, 
simple-minded  members  of  their  earnings,  which 
should  go  to  support  their  families,  rob  them  under 
the  pretext  of  helping  them,  will  hardly  listen  to 
our  appeals  for  a  broader  sympathy  and  altruism 
towards  the  more  unfortunate  class  of  our  people, 
who,  under  the  control  of  designing  men,  are  as  clay 
in  the  hands  of  the  moulder.  We  know  that  the  very 
moment  a  man  pretends  to  be  engaged  in  the  work 
of  uplifting  to  higher  and  better  conditions,  a  class 
of  unfortunate  people,  and  charges  them  for  his  serv- 
ices, makes  them  give  up  their  earnings,  that  his 
work  is  not  altruistic,  but  selfish,  and  how  selfish 
depends  upon  their  patience  and  submission  to  his 
demands.  What  would  decent,  liberty-loving  people 
think  of  the  men  of  the  North  if  they  had  exacted 
of  every  slave,  as  a  condition  of  his  freedom,  that 
he  should  give  them  a  lien  on  a  large  part  of  his 
earnings  for  life,  and  that  he  should  agree  to  do 
their  bidding  to  assault,  murder,  assassinate  or  dyna- 
mite any  men  whom  his  liberators  should  designate, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEM  101 

and  carry  the  torch  to  burn  their  property?  How 
much  better,  if  any,  would  his  new  form  of  slavery 
be  than  the  old?  Do  the  temperance  reformers  de- 
mand a  perpetual  lien  on  the  earnings  of  the  drunk- 
ard, the  inebriate,  for  lifting  him  up  and  freeing  him 
from  the  demon  of  rum  and  leave  nothing  for  his 
family?  Do  the  missionaries  charge  the  heathen  all 
his  life-giving  substance  to  enlighten  him?  Indeed 
there  is  nothing  altruistic  in  the  pretended  interest 
in  the  laboring  man  by  the  officials  of  the  labor  trust, 
or  of  any  other  trust,  but  on  the  contrary  the  heart- 
less selfishness  that  knows  nothing  of  human  sym- 
pathy, and  cares  nothing  for  equal  rights  and  jus- 
tice. While  the  officials  of  the  labor  trust  continue 
to  rob,  plunder  and  extort  from  the  simple-minded 
members  of  the  unions  their  earnings,  they  should 
expect  to  arouse  the  indignation  of  men  of  enlight- 
ened consciences  and  sympathies  for  the  unfortunate 
classes  of  our  people  without  regard  to  their  creed  or 
the  influence  that  controls  them.  The  labor  trust  offi- 
cials, with  their  hands  on  the  throats  and  pockets  of 
the  poor,  simple-minded  members  of  the  unions,  and 
talking  to  them  of  grinding  toil  and  sweat  shops,  as  if 
it  was  a  crime  to  work,  reminds  one  of  the  vampire 
gently  fanning  with  its  flapping  wings  its  sleep- 
ing victim  while  sucking  the  life-blood  from  its 
veins.  It  is  the  history  of  all  institutions  of  crime, 
wrong  and  oppression,  that  they  bring  upon  them- 
selves their  own  punishment  and  destruction,  just  as 
in  the  case  of  negro  slavery.  We  know  that  the 
leaders  of  negro  slavery  were  domineering  and  in- 


102"  -mb  WHITE  SLAVERY 

suiting  and  paid  no  attention  to  the  rights  of  those 
who  differed  with  them  in  regard  to  the  questions  at 
issue,  as  the  leaders  of  the  labor  trust  are  now  doing, 
until  their  oppressions  became  so  intolerable  that  the 
people  rose  up  and  destroyed  the  institution  of  negro 
slavery,  and  just  as  they  will  rise  up  and  destroy  the 
white  slavery  of  the  labor  trust.  We  do  not  know 
whether  the  leaders  of  the  labor  trust  will  precipitate 
a  bloody  struggle,  a  bloody  rebellion  for  the  perpet- 
uation of  the  union  slavery  or  not,  like  the  bloody 
war  that  was  precipitated  by  the  proponents  of  negro 
slavery;  but  we  do  know  that  the  union  slavery  of 
the  labor  trust  is  becoming  more  and  more  unprofit- 
able to  the  employer  every  year,  just  as  negro  slav- 
ery was  becoming  more  and  more  unprofitable  every 
year  to  their  masters  up  to  the  Civil  War.  Every 
employer  knows  that  the  labor  of  the  union  slaves 
of  the  labor  trust  is  every  year  becoming  more  and 
more  inefficient,  less  productive,  by  the  methods  of 
the  trust,  which  encourage  "  soldiering/'  that  is,  of 
the  union  employee  doing  as  little  work  as  possible 
to  hold  his  job;  of  making  work,  that  is,  of  doing 
his  work  so  slouchy,  slovenly  and  careless  as  to  make 
it  necessary  to  do  it  over,  and  in  general  to  feel  no 
loyal  interest  in  the  work  for  the  employer  whom 
he  is  taught  by  the  trust  leaders  to  hate  as  an  enemy. 
Why  should  an  employer  prefer  to  have  in  his  serv- 
ice the  free  and  independent  worker  rather  than  the 
union  slave  of  the  labor  trust?  Because  he  knows 
that  the  independent  worker  looks  for  his  merit  and 
loyalty  to  the  interests  of  his  employer,  to  hold  him 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  103 

to  his  job,  whereas  the  union  employee  cares  nothing 
for  the  interests  of  his  employer;  thinks  it  his  duty 
to  soldier  all  he  can;  to  make  all  the  work  he  can, 
and  looks  to  the  union  to  hold  him  to  his  job.  This 
policy  of  the  labor  trust  leaders  to  have  the  members 
sacrifice  their  independence,  individuality  and  in- 
dustrial freedom,  to  the  slavery  of  the  unions,  is 
gradually  doing  its  work,  and  doing  it  effectively. 
In  the  end,  we  repeat,  slave  labor  never  has  been 
profitable  to  the  employer,  and  with  the  advance  of 
general  intelligence  and  morality,  it  is  certain  to  be- 
come less  profitable.  The  slave,  feeling  no  interest 
in  his  work,  has  no  incentive  to  initiative  like  the 
free  man  who  is  always  looking  for  improvement 
over  ancient  methods  and  processes.  There  can  be 
no  industrial  peace  until  the  employee  comes  to  rec- 
ognize that  his  interest  is  bound  up  with  the  inter- 
ests of  the  employer,  and  until  there  shall  be  that 
mutual  good  will  that  should  exist  between  partners 
in  any  business  enterprise. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

"  DOWN  WITH  THE  EMPLOYER,"  CRIES 
UNIONISM. 

This  cry  echoes  from  "  the  master  of  a  million 
minds  "  of  the  federated  unions  of  this  country, 
down  to  the  head  of  the  local  union,  if  not  in  the 
actual  words  of  the  heading,  yet  practically  to  that 
effect.  What  better  evidence  could  we  have  of  the 
incompetence  of  labor  leaders  to  understand  the 
progressive  spirit  of  the  times,  than  this  wild  propo- 
sition to  destroy  the  hands  and  brains  of  those  who 
furnish  employment  for  the  members  from  whose 
wages  labor  leaders  are  supported?  This  sentiment 
of  Down  with  the  Employer,  Down  with  the  Courts, 
evokes  the  applause  of  the  thoughtless  members  of 
the  unions  wherever  it  is  uttered  by  the  leaders, 
who  are  constantly  demanding  special  privileges  for 
organized  labor,  showing  the  kind  of  constituency 
they  have  behind  them,  and  how  incapable  it  is  of 
reasoning  and  looking  after  its  own  interests,  how 
completely  it  has  surrendered  its  individuality  and 
industrial  freedom. 

When  men  have  not  passed  that  phase  of  intel- 
lectual development  which  permits  them  to  surren- 
der their  individuality  and  lose  their  independence, 

104 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  105 

we  see  how  easy  it  is  for  their  masters  to  secure  their 
applause  and  approval  of  the  utterance  of  any  propo- 
sition, no  matter  how  absurd  and  destructive  of  the 
rights  of  others,  just  as  the  subject  of  the  operator 
in  hypnotism  endeavors  to  obey  his  will  and  every 
uttered  command.  We  cannot  even  think  of  laborer, 
without  thinking  of  employer,  any  more  than  we 
can  think  of  a  right  hand  without  thinking  of  a  left 
hand,  of  a  son  without  thinking  of  a  father,  of  a 
slave  without  a  master. 

A  man  was  convicted  not  long  ago  in  Chicago  for 
participating  in  murdering  his  grandmother,  and  his 
plea  as  brought  out  in  the  trial  was,  that  she  died 
from  the  effects  of  torture  and  exorcism,  in  which 
he  had  assisted  in  efforts  to  drive  the  devil  out  of 
her.  This  tragedy  which  was  enacted  in  the  name  of 
religion,  does  not  equal  in  intellectual  backwardness, 
the  tragical  effects  of  the  torturing  operations  on 
industrial  life,  which  gives  nourishment  to  all,  by 
the  blind  devotees  of  unionism  in  the  name  of  labor. 
They  would  destroy  industrial  life,  which  gives  them 
food  and  clothing  and  shelter,  by  torture  and  exor- 
cism, because  their  leaders  have  impressed  upon  their 
minds  that  that  life  possesses  a  devil  which  ought  to 
be  expelled.  Where  men  surrender  their  individu- 
ality and  set  up  no  claims  to  freedom  of  initiative, 
they  follow  their  leaders  with  that  blind  devotion 
which  was  characteristic  of  the  retainers  of  the 
barons  and  chieftains  of  feudal  times. 

An  impartial  review  of  the  history  of  unionism 
would  certainly  show  that  its  most  prominent  fea- 


106  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ture  has  been  its  destructive  tendencies,  its  efforts 
to  destroy  the  ideals  of  modern  civilization,  without 
offering  anything  in  place  of  them  except  a  state 
of  anarchy,  a  state  in  which  the  individual  would 
find  no  security  for  life  and  property.  It  is  rather 
an  impressive  fact  that  out  of  a  constituency  of 
about  two  millions  of  men,  unionism  has  never  pro- 
duced a  man  of  marked  constructive  capacity,  a  man 
with  views  broad  enough  to  see  that  its  destructive 
tendencies  would  have  to  be  checked  if  it  expected 
ever  to  accomplish  any  good,  and  set  itself  before 
the  world  as  a  law  abiding  organization,  demanding 
no  more  privileges  than  other  classes  of  citizens. 
Unionism  is  simply  a  survival  in  the  midst  of  a 
largely  altruistic  civilization,  of  a  type  of  primitive 
life  which  was  contemporaneous  with  the  hairy  ele- 
phant, the  mammoth  and  cave  lions,  the  bears  and 
hyenas  of  the  glacial  epoch,  just  as  the  man  who 
murdered  his  grandmother  exhibited  a  type  of  life 
characteristic  of  the  lowest  races  of  men,  as  under 
pure  socialism. 

We  must  not  lose  our  patience  in  dealing  with 
this  primitive  form  of  life  as  it  is  manifested  in 
unionism  and  socialism,  for  it  must  gradually  pass 
away  like  all  other  forms  of  savage  life.  It  cannot 
long  exist  in  contact  with  the  higher  intelligence  of 
our  modern  civilization.  The  lower  forms  of  life 
have  been  yielding  to  the  higher  for  millions  of  years 
during  the  struggle  for  existence,  all  unconscious  of 
emotions  of  sympathy,  or  of  a  sense  of  wrong  in  the 
strong  in  exterminating  the  weak  and  unadapted. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  107 

During  all  this  great  length  of  time  when  the  earth 
was  ensanguined  by  tooth  and  claw,  it  was  simply  a 
preparation  of  its  habitable  parts  for  the  existence 
of  the  highest  type  of  man  of  to-day.  Such  has  been 
the  order  of  nature,  and  there  is  no  good  reason  for 
losing  faith  that  it  will  not  continue  in  the  future  to 
be  the  order  of  nature  while  the  earth  shall  be  fit 
for  this  highest  type  of  life  and  intelligence.  These 
men  of  primitive,  selfish  instincts  who  stand  in  the 
way  of  progress  and  of  a  higher  life,  know  not  what 
they  do;  know  not  that  they  are  deluded  fanatics 
who  throw  themselves  under  the  wheel  of  Juggernaut 
to  be  crushed  in  their  efforts  to  stop  the  progress 
of  the  age,  and  the  development  of  the  sentiment 
of  justice  and  equal  rights,  and  the  ties  of  common 
fellowship  and  interests.  It  is  our  duty  to  protect 
ourselves  against  all  noxious  forms  of  life  which 
make  our  existence  miserable  or  tends  to  destroy  us. 
We  have  constantly  invisible  as  well  as  visible  foes 
to  fight.  We  must  destroy  the  mosquito  which  carries 
and  inoculates  men  with  the  germs  of  yellow  fever; 
we  must  destroy  all  poisonous  insects,  reptiles  and 
animals  which  stand  in  the  way  and  threaten  or 
endanger  our  lives,  our  happiness  and  well-being. 
And  we -must  efficiently  restrain  those  of  unsteady 
minds  who  would  force  upon  us  their  primitive  prac- 
tices, practices  and  methods  common  to  the  lowest 
races  of  men,  and  which  take  no  account  of  a  moral 
sense  or  a  sense  of  justice  and  equal  rights  without 
which  the  highest  form  of  social  life  cannot  exist. 
These  cries  of  ' '  Down  with  the  Employer, ' '  * '  Down 


108  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

with  the  Courts, "  we  believe  are  the  expiring  gasps 
of  an  organization  whose  leaders  have  long  been 
drunk  and  made  mad  with  a  power  which  they  have 
too  long  wielded  to  the  common  injury  without  their 
attention  being  drawn  to  the  teachings  of  rational 
altruism  and  a  broader  charity  and  sympathy  for 
those  more  unfortunate  than  ourselves. 

We  have  made  good  law-abiding  citizens  of  In- 
dians whose  fathers  were  savages,  and  if  we  cannot 
teach  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  and  their 
slaves  to  respect  the  rights  of  those  outside  the  or- 
ganization, we  will  curb  them  and  endeavor  by  altru- 
istic acts  and  the  education  of  our  public  schools  to 
develop  a  moral  sense  and  a  sense  of  justice  and 
equal  rights  in  their  children.  We  can  get  along 
without  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery,  who  teach 
their  slaves  to  hate  our  government  founded  on  equal 
rights,  and  to  hate  everything  that  tends  to  bind  the 
people  together  in  common  fellowship  and  interests. 
We  would  condemn  in  the  strongest  terms  the  teach- 
ing of  a  religion  of  hate  towards  the  peoples  of  races 
far  removed  from  us  in  geneological  descent,  but 
to  teach  a  religion  of  hate  towards  our  own  brothers 
and  kinsmen,  should  be  condemned  as  a  crime  by  all 
right-minded  men.  We  can  get  along  without  the 
enemies  of  industrial  and  commercial  freedom,  and 
the  disturbers  of  social  order,  but  we  cannot  get 
along  without  the  employer  of  labor  whose  active 
brain  furnishes  work  for  those  who  are  unable  to 
stand  alone,  and  who  have  never  been  successful  in 
any  business  on  their  own  account,  and  find  employ- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  109 

ment  under  him  more  profitable  than  anything  else 
they  are  able  to  do.  We  cannot  get  along  without 
the  employer  whose  energy  and  careful  calculations 
enable  him  to  put  thousands  of  men  into  positions 
to  earn  livings  for  themselves  and  their  families,  and 
whose  life  is  as  useful  to  others  as  to  himself.  No 
sane  man  will  contend  that  the  race  of  mankind 
would  be  any  worse  off  if  there  was  not  in  exist- 
ence a  master  of  the  union  slavery  to  extort  and  ab- 
sorb the  earnings  of  the  poorer  men  of  the  country 
and  poison  their  minds  with  prejudice  and  hatred 
of  fellowmen.  The  misguided  masters  learn  nothing 
by  experience,  for  if  they  did  they  would  know  that 
by  ruining  the  business  of  the  employer  by  strike 
and  boycott,  or  forcing  him  to  move  his  plant  to 
some  other  town,  as  frequently  happens,  it  would 
throw  the  union  slaves  out  of  employment  for  an 
indefinite  period  and  oblige  them  to  hang  around 
town  in  idleness,  or  drift  to  other  places  in  search 
of  work,  leaving  their  families,  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren, to  be  taken  care  of  by  the  community  which 
they  had  helped  to  make  poor  by  loss  of  business  and 
destruction  of  property  by  the  strikers  and  by  their 
rioting  and  turbulence. 

Retaliation  is  not  only  justifiable  in  war,  but  the 
side  opposed  to  irregular  war,  guerrilla  war,  as  in 
the  execution  of  prisoners,  is  sometimes  obliged  to 
resort  to  it,  and  execute  as  many  prisoners  in  retal- 
iation for  the  same  number  executed  by  the  other 
side,  to  bring  that  other  side  to  a  sense  of  the  weak- 
ness of  its  position  in  violating  the  laws  of  war  and 


110  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

of  humanity.  Now  the  labor  wars  in  this  country 
have  reached  a  point  where  the  unions  resort  to  vio- 
lence, destructive  war  on  society,  to  win  their  fights 
with  employers,  putting  their  leaders  in  the  posi- 
tion of  outlaws  or  bandits,  and  fully  justifying  manu- 
facturers and  employers  of  labor,  to  resort  to  retal- 
iation, by  blacklisting  every  member  of  the  unions 
engaged  in  strikes,  boycotting  and  the  destruction 
of  property,  until  he  could  show  satisfactory  evi- 
dence of  repudiating  the  union  slavery  and  repent- 
ance for  the  outrages  committed  against  employers, 
independent  workers  and  society. 

Think  of  the  advice  given  by  the  masters  who 
live  off  the  grinding  toil  of  those  who  have  not  the 
force  of  character  and  the  initiative  to  defend  their 
own  rights,  to  destroy  the  employer  whom  they  rec- 
ognize as  having  better  business  capacity  than  them- 
selves, and  to  whom  they  must  look  for  employment 
to  enable  them  to  earn  a  support  for  their  wives  and 
children.  Think  of  the  selfish,  greedy  masters  who 
never  furnish  laboring  men  with  a  day's  employment, 
and  whose  sole  means  of  living  is  by  extorting  from 
laboring  men  their  wages  and  by  blackmailing  em- 
ployers having  the  hardihood  of  advising  them  to 
destroy  the  employer  who  promptly  pays  them  every 
cent  he  owes  them  for  wages.  Those  who  would  fas- 
ten injustice  and  oppression  upon  their  fellowmen 
have  often  been  disappointed  in  the  effectiveness  of 
the  measures  adopted,  the  measure  sometimes  having 
an  effect  contrary  to  that  which  had  been  calculated. 
So  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  in  their  efforts 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  111 

to  destroy  employers  of  labor,  are  unintentionally 
forcing  them  into  the  open  shop  movement,  and  into 
employers'  associations  where  they  are  not  obliged 
to  use  slave  labor,  and  put  up  with  the  domineering 
conduct  of  the  walking  delegate,  the  restriction  of 
apprentices,  the  "  soldiering  "  and  making  work  of 
union  employees,  and  the  hundreds  of  other  insuffer- 
able annoyances  borne  by  those  who  employ  union 
labor. 

The  intelligent  and  thoughtful  part  of  the  mem- 
bership of  the  unions  are  not  in  sympathy  with  the 
wild-eyed  ravings  of  the  professional  labor  agitator 
who  never  strikes  or  never  sweats,  and  who  would 
to  satisfy  his  own  vanity,  destroy  the  employer  of 
labor,  and  also  laboring  men  who  depend  upon  re- 
turns for  their  labor  to  support  their  families.  The 
enemies  of  industrial  freedom  and  teachers  of  hate 
and  selfishness,  in  the  insane  vanity  of  their  power, 
not  only  cry  "  Down  with  the  Employer,"  but  their 
cry  is  also  "  down  with  our  government,  its  laws,  its 
flag,  and  its  courts ;  down  with  equal  rights  and  jus- 
tice, down  with  everybody  who  refuses  to  pay  tri- 
bute to  them;  down  with  the  free  laboring  man  who 
will  not  pay  a  heavy  fee  for  permission  to  work 
and  give  them  a  lien  on  his  wages  while  permitted  to 
work;  down  with  everything  that  will  not  tamely 
submit  to  be  a  host  to  which  they  may  attach  them- 
selves as  parasites  to  absorb  its  life-giving  sub- 
stance. ' ' 

In  different  forms  of  life  an  individual  that  be- 
comes a  host  for  a  parasite,  if  it  cannot  get  rid  of  it, 


112  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

may  be  destroyed  or  greatly  weakened.  What  is 
known  as  the  Texas  fever  in  this  country,  a  very 
fatal  disease  among  our  native  cattle,  is  caused,  as 
investigations  have  shown,  by  a  parasite,  a  small  tick 
that  multiplies  very  rapidly  and  may  be  destroyed 
by  dipping  the  infected  animals  in  crude  oil. 

We  can  destroy  the  Texas  tick  infecting  our  native 
cattle  by  dipping  the  animals,  but  the  parasites  of 
the  social  organism,  must  be  got  rid  of  in  some  other 
manner  than  by  dipping  the  host. 

We  can  never  have  healthy  social  conditions  and 
a  healthy  social  organism,  until  we  find  some  means 
of  getting  rid  of  those  who,  by  unfair  and  selfish 
schemes,  take  from  the  honest  toiler  his  wages,  with- 
out giving  him  anything  useful  in  return.  The  open 
shop  offers  the  best  solution  of  the  trouble,  the  best 
remedy  for  the  cure  of  the  disease  that  is  costing 
the  country  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  and  hun- 
dreds of  human  lives  and  injured  persons  every  year, 
for  in  the  open  shop  the  parasites  cannot  find  hosts 
to  which  they  can  attach  themselves,  and  in  their  dis- 
appointment and  rage,  cry  "  Down  with  the  Em- 
ployer, Down  with  the  Courts,  Down  with  the  Gov- 
ernment, Down  with  Industrial  and  Commercial 
Freedom  everywhere/*  In  the  open  shop  the  em- 
ployer and  his  employees  are  supposed  to  have  been 
inoculated  with  the  serum  cultures  of  common  sense 
and  to  be  immune  to  the  destructive  attacks  of 
labor  agitators.  They  do  not  demand  of  Congress 
or  the  State  legislatures,  the  enactment  of  laws  giv- 
ing them  special  privileges  and  advantages  over  other 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  113 

citizens,  as  do  the  leaders  of  closed  shop  unionism. 
They  estimate  men  according  to  their  merits,  their 
good  fellowship,  their  respect  for  the  rights  of  others, 
and  the  man  with  the  union  card  is  given  no  special 
consideration. 

There  can  be  no  valid  objection  to  any  one  preach- 
ing a  rational  discontent  among  those  who  are  short 
on  comforts  and  happiness ;  a  discontent  that  has  a 
tendency  to  arouse  them  to  self-consciousness  and 
to  plan  for  and  strive  to  attain  a  better  condition; 
a  discontent  that  awakens  them  to  check  up  their 
lives  and  see  where  they  have  wasted  opportunities 
that  they  should  have  taken  advantage  of ;  a  discon- 
tent that  determines  them  to  make  the  most  of  oppor- 
tunities in  the  future;  a  discontent  that  determines 
them  to  equal  or  excel  their  neighbors  in  acts  of  gen- 
erosity and  friendly  rivalry  in  providing  for  the  com- 
forts of  life,  instead  of  nursing  sour  moods  and  envy- 
ing their  neighbors  the  comforts  and  good  things 
which  industry,  thrift  and  economy  have  brought 
them..  We  should  like  to  hear  of  the  preaching  of  the 
kind  of  discontent  which  would  propose  to  reform 
the  world  by  commencing  the  reform  at  home  so  that 
the  reformer  could  point  to  himself  as  a  conspicious 
example  of  the  kind  of  man  he  would  like  to  make 
of  all  men.  We  should  like  to  hear  of  the  preaching 
of  the  kind  of  discontent  that  would  stimulate  men 
to  examine  their  own  conduct  and  weight  it  in  such 
manner  that  they  would  see  they  should  not  demand 
more  rights,  privileges  or  immunities  for  themselves 
than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  all  others ;  a  kind 


114  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

of  discontent  that  would  stimulate  an  introspective 
examination  of  every  one  so  that  he  might  see  his 
follies  and  failures  in  such  light  as  to  guide  him  in 
his  proper  course  in  the  future.  We  seriously  object 
to  and  abhor  the  preaching  of  that  kind  of  discon- 
tent which  appeals  to  and  makes  the  weak-minded, 
the  indolent,  the  vicious  and  the  violent  covet  his 
neighbor's  ass,  or  any  of  his  neighbor's  property 
which  has  been  acquired  by  honest  toil.  We  abhor 
the  preaching  of  that  kind  of  discontent  which 
causes  any  class  of  men  to  charge  their  failures  in 
life  to  their  neighbors  who  have  been  nore  indus- 
trious and  provident,  and  less  envious  of  the  success 
of  others.  We  abhor  the  preaching  of  that  kind  of 
discontent  which  appeals  to  the  lowest  passions  of 
weak-minded  men  to  commit  acts  of  cruelty  and 
aggressions  on  fellowmen  because  these  fellowmen 
claim  their  natural  right  to  work  and  make  a  living 
to  support  their  families.  We  abhor  the  preaching 
of  that  kind  of  discontent  which  causes  weak-minded 
men  to  go  on  strikes  and  give  up  remunerative  em- 
ployment to  satisfy  the  whims  and  vanity  of  men 
who  never  strike  and  never  sweat,  but  who  like  most 
other  parasites,  absorb  the  life-giving  substance  of 
their  host. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
INJUSTICE  UNPROFITABLE. 

When  slavery  was  introduced  into  the  Colonies 
of  this  country,  the  colonists  thought  that  it  would 
be  immensely  profitable  to  those  interested  in  the 
institution;  but  when  considered  in  its  totality  and 
in  all  its  bearings,  they  found  that  not  to  be  true. 
With  the  slaves  fed  on  coarse  food  of  corn  bread, 
pork  and  bacon,  and  overseers  to  keep  them  at  work 
from  daylight  to  dark,  with  few  intermissions  for 
rest,  how  was  it  possible  for  slavery  to  be  otherwise 
than  profitable,  thought  those  interested  in  it?  But 
that  it  was  not  as  profitable  as  had  been  calculated, 
was  proved  from  the  fact  that  one  after  the  other  of 
several  of  the  States  abandoned  it  and  freed  their 
slaves,  until  the  Civil  War  came  up  to  complete  the 
destruction  of  the  institution.  Those  who  had  trav- 
eled in  the  South  up  to  the  Civil  War,  know  that 
from  the  great  number  of  worn  out  and  abandoned 
farms  or  plantations,  because  of  poor  methods  of  cul- 
tivation, that  slavery  was  becoming  so  unprofitable, 
that  the  price  of  slaves  must  have  rapidly  declined 
in  a  few  years  to  a  vanishing  point.  Aside  from  the 
moral  degradation  of  men  owning  and  selling  their 
own  children  by  slave  mothers,  and  the  general 
demoralizing  effects  of  slavery,  the  Southern  States 

115 


116  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

were  far  behind  the  North  in  prosperity,  in  mechan- 
ical skill,  in  inventive  genius,  in  the  assertion  of 
individual  rights,  and  in  all  those  traits  which  dis- 
tinguish the  social  from  the  anti-social  man.  In 
addition  to  the  demoralizing  influences  of  the  insti- 
tution, there  was  the  constant  fear,  in  many  instances 
amounting  to  terror  of  the  slave  owners,  of  murder 
and  assassination  by  their  slaves,  and  also  the  severe 
prohibition  and  intolerance  of  all  discussion  in  re- 
gard to  the  evils  of  slavery,  and  its  influence  on  the 
progress  of  our  country  towards  higher  ideals. 
There  was  also  a  cultivation  of  sectional  hatred  and 
bitterness,  which  caused  every  man  from  the  North 
visiting  the  South  on  business  or  pleasure,  to  be  an 
object  of  suspicion  and  frequently  of  insult,  culmin- 
ating in  the  Civil  War,  with  its  terrible  losses  of  life 
and  property. 

When  a  king  of  England  a  few  centuries  ago  de- 
based the  coinage  and  swore  the  officers  of  his  mint 
to  conceal  the  practice,  and  endeavored  to  make  the 
merchants  of  his  kingdom  believe  that  the  gold  and 
silver  coins  were  of  full  value,  he  doubtless  thought 
the  scheme  was  a  profitable  one  although  he  knew 
it  was  a  dishonest  one.  But  after  awhile  when  other 
kings  adopted  the  same  practice,  the  originator  of 
the  scheme  lost  as  much  on  the  debtor  as  he  had 
gained  on  the  creditor  side,  beside  losing  his  reputa- 
tion for  honest  dealing,  and  making  it  more  difficult 
to  borrow  money  when  he  needed  it  and  was  com- 
pelled to  pay  a  higher  rate  of  interest  on  the  loans 
made  him. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  117 

The  ruling  powers  of  Spain  thought  that  by  the 
expulsion  and  extermination  of  the  Mohammedan 
Moors  and  the  confiscation  of  their  property  would 
be  immensely  profitable  to  the  State,  but  it  proved 
otherwise,  for  closely  following  the  extermination, 
expulsion  and  confiscation  of  the  property  of  this 
industrious  and  prosperous  but  unfortunate  people, 
of  whom  history  tells  us,  fifty  thousand  were  buried 
alive  in  a  few  years,  there  was  national  depression 
and  suffering.  There  were  whole  provinces  in  which 
the  suffering  was  so  great  that  many  loyal  Catholic 
subjects  died  of  starvation. 

Coming  down  to  our  own  time  it  has  appeared  to 
the  superficial  thinkers  and  the  leaders  of  unionism 
that  if  they  could  use  a  powerful  oath-bound  labor 
organization  to  do  their  bidding,  as  slaves  do  the 
bidding  of  their  masters,  they  could  control  the  labor 
market  of  the  country  to  the  great  profit  and  ad- 
vantage of  their  class.  By  ignoring  the  equal  rights 
of  independent  workers  to  industrial  freedom  and  by 
ignoring  the  rights  of  employers  to  manage  their 
own  business,  by  assaults  and  intimidation,  and  the 
use  of  dynamite,  the  independent  workers  would  not 
dare  to  bid  for  any  work  the  unions  wanted,  and  the 
employers  would  not  dare  to  give  independent  labor 
any  work  by  standing  in  the  way  of  the  unions.  An 
organization  so  perfect,  with  such  refined  methods 
of  destroying  its  enemies,  who  would  think  of  hav- 
ing the  temerity  of  opposing  or  standing  in  its  way  ? 
"Was  there  not  here  an  opportunity  of  transferring 
in  a  short  time  a  good  part  of  the  wealth  of  the 


\ 


118  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

country  into  the  hands  of  the  favored  class?  But 
like  all  other  schemes  based  on  injustice  and  the 
ignoring  of  the  rights  of  others  to  industrial  and 
commercial  freedom,  this  despoiling  scheme  of  the 
dreamers  of  organized  labor,  has  not  turned  out  as 
they  calculated.  As  far  as  may  be  gathered  from 
statistics  and  independent  inquiry,  the  followers  of 
organized  labor  after  all  their  noise  and  turbulence 
and  sacrifice  of  their  independence  and  freedom,  are 
not  so  well  off  as  far  as  comforts  and  happiness  are 
concerned,  as  those  who  have  refused  to  surrender 
their  individuality  and  liberty  in  order  to  profit  by 
the  ruin  of  others.  It  has  been  shown  by  the  reports 
of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  that  the  losses  to 
organized  labor  by  strikes  amount  from  fifteen  to 
twenty-five  million  dollars  a  year,  and  that  the  losses 
to  employers  amount  from  seven  to  twelve  million 
dollars  a  year.  But  the  losses  to  organized  labor 
and  to  employers,  are  small  items  to  the  total  loss  to 
the  country  by  labor  disturbances.  It  has  been  esti- 
mated by  the  industrial  and  employers*  associations 
that  the  losses  to  the  country  by  labor  disturbances, 
strikes,  the  destruction  of  property  and  rioting  and 
suspension  of  business,  amount  to  about  two  hun- 
dred millions  of  dollars  a  year,  or  greater  than  the 
losses  by  fire.  It  is  also  shown  that  in  one  year,  1903, 
there  were  3,494  strikes,  throwing  out  of  employment 
656,055  employees,  perhaps  fully  one-half  of  the  mili- 
tant part  of  organized  labor,  being  nearly  ten  strikes 
a  day.  We  see  here  that  after  all  the  cruelties,  the 
tyrannies,  the  murders,  the  assassinations,  the  cor- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  119 

ruption  of  the  public  morals,  the  weakening  of  the 
ties  of  common  fellowship  and  interests,  and  the 
ignoring  the  rights  of  those  outside  the  ranks  of 
unionism,  injustice  has  not  been  profitable  to  organ- 
ized labor.  It  is  a  mournful  fact  in  the  tragedies  of 
the  lives  of  many  great  men,  that  not  until  it  was 
too  late  were  they  impressed  that  there  is  no  power 
worth  having,  or  worth  wielding,  without  justice. 
"We  know  that  it  has  been  the  history  of  all  life  on 
the  earth  from  the  lowest  beginnings,  that  the  less 
adapted  and  least  intelligent  have  been  gradually 
yielding  to  the  better  adapted,  to  the  more  intelli- 
gent, and  that  such  must  continue  to  be  the  course 
of  nature.  The  principles  and  practices  of  union- 
ism being  a  survival  from  primitive  times,  from  the 
childhood  of  our  race,  knows  nothing  about  equal 
rights  to  industrial  and  commercial  freedom,  and  is 
not  adapted  to  that  form  of  social  life  in  which  equal 
rights  and  justice  are  coming  to  be  the  leading  fea- 
tures. If  unionism  could  see  its  cruelties,  its  tyran- 
nies, its  corruptions,  its  want  of  respect  for  the  rights 
of  others,  its  want  of  sympathy  and  good  will  for 
men  of  all  classes,  this  would  presuppose  that  it  was 
conscious  of  what  it  is  doing,  and  being  conscious 
of  what  it  was  doing,  presupposes  that  it  purposely 
does  things  unprofitable,  purposely  injures  itself. 
With  its  record  as  a  disturber  of  peaceful  industrial 
conditions,  and  with  its  record  of  violence  and  the 
assumption  of  rights  and  privileges  it  is  unwilling  to 
concede  to  others,  it  does  itself  immeasurable  injury, 
for  no  law-abiding,  peace-loving  man  wishes  to  have 


120  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

anything  to  do  with  the  membership  of  an  organiza- 
tion that  is  just  as  ready  to  attack  and  destroy  those 
against  whom  it  has  no  grievance  as  those  against 
whom  it  has  a  grievance.  It  has  been  so  reckless 
in  its  disregard  of  the  rights  of  others,  in  the  break- 
ing of  solemn  contracts  with  employers,  in  attacking 
and  destroying  the  property  of  employers  against 
whom  it  had  no  grievance,  of  persecuting  the  fam- 
ilies of  independent  workers,  and  in  all  kinds  of 
acts  of  violence  and  lawlessness,  that  peaceable  cit- 
izens who  stand  for  law  and  order,  for  protection 
and  self  defence,  have  been  obliged  to  organize 
associations  all  over  the  country  for  the  purpose  of 
seeing  that  the  laws  are  enforced,  and  to  curb  its 
numerous  outrages.  Those  who  control  and  direct 
the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions,  have  time 
and  again  brought  poverty  and  suffering  to  their 
own  people.  They  have  been  unable  to  see  or  re- 
fused to  see,  that  under  existing  social  conditions, 
there  is  no  power  worth  wielding  without  justice, 
without  men  recognizing  and  respecting  each  others 
rights,  to  life,  liberty  and  property.  In  their  blind- 
ness and  inability  to  get  beyond  primitive  ideals, 
primitive  modes  of  thought,  they  have  been  un- 
able to  see  that  right  conduct  would  have  been 
worth  many  dollars  to  the  organization  in  every 
instance,  and  that  wrong  conduct  has  been  costly, 
sometimes  costly  beyond  calculation.  In  their  reck- 
less disregard  of  the  rights  of  others,  they  have 
been  unable  to  see  that  there  is  such  a  close 
interdependence  between  the  different  parts  of  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  121 

social  organism  that  one  part  can  not  be  injuriously 
affected  without  injuriously  affecting  all  the  other 
parts ;  that  the  membership  of  the  unions  can  not  be 
prosperous  without  the  community  of  which  they 
form  a  part  being  prosperous.  They  have  been  un- 
able to  see  that  it  has  been  by  the  independent  work- 
man who  has  refused  to  surrender  his  individuality 
and  freedom  to  the  unions,  that  labor  has  become  re- 
spectable. Let  every  man  of  the  unions  capable  of 
thinking  and  having  self-respect,  take  the  matter 
home  to  himself  whether  he  wishes  to  be  looked  upon 
by  the  community  or  the  intelligent  and  freedom- 
loving  part  of  it,  as  the  slave  of  a  master  who  owns 
and  carries  him  around  in  his  pocket  by  bill  of  sale 
to  dispose  of  his  life,  his  services,  his  vote  or  elec- 
toral privilege,  as  he  thinks  best,  as  completely  as 
the  master  carried  in  his  pocket  the  bill  of  sale  of  his 
slaves,  with  the  right  to  dispose  of  their  lives  and 
services  as  he  thought  best,  and  then  ask  himself 
if  he  thinks  the  surrender  of  his  independence  and 
freedom  has  been  profitable.  If  the  members  of  the 
unions  could  have  their  eyes  opened  to  the  evil  con- 
sequences of  surrendering  their  individuality  and 
freedom,  there  would  be  less  lawlessness,  fewer  mur- 
ders and  assassinations  of  independent  workers,  less 
wrecking  of  passenger  trains  and  street  cars  causing 
the  loss  of  scores  of  lives,  in  this  country,  than  have 
been  chronicled  in  newspapers  lately,  and  less  hatred 
for  independent  workers  than  has  formerly  pre- 
vailed. Indeed  it  should  be  plain  to  every  observing 
man  that  the  union  slavery  is  becoming  more  and 


122  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

more  unprofitable  to  all  who  have  anything  to  do 
with  it  except  to  the  masters  in  whose  interest  it  is 
kept  up,  and  who  live  by  the  misfortunes  of  others. 
When  the  masters  deny  their  slaves  the  inalienable 
right  to  fit  their  sons  for  useful  and  remunerative 
professions  or  vocations,  such  conduct  is  unjust  and 
unprofitable  to  the  individuals  deprived  of  their 
rights,  and  unjust  and  unprofitable  to  society  which 
should  have  the  fullest  measure  of  usefulness  of  its 
citizens,  for  when  young  men  grow  up  without  bus- 
iness qualifications  or  a  knowledge  of  the  trades, 
they  too  frequently  become  tramps  or  drift  into 
criminal  and  wasted  lives, — lives  that  are  a  heavy 
burden  to  society. 

It  has  been  the  policy  of  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery,  to  limit  the  number  of  apprentices  in  all 
establishments,  all  closed  shops,  in  proportion  to  the 
journeymen  employed  so  that  there  will  be  such 
scarcity  and  demand  for  each  kind  of  skilled  labor, 
as  will  keep  the  price  of  it  above  the  normal  level. 
It  certainly  seems  in  taking  a  superficial  view  of  the 
matter,  that  this  method  of  forcing  a  scarcity  of 
particular  kinds  of  labor,  would  be  profitable  to  the 
members  of  the  unions,  but  in  the  last  analysis  it  has 
not  been  profitable  to  them,  and  will  not  be  profit- 
able to  them  while  the  masters  have  less  than  ten 
per  cent,  of  the  labor  with  which  to  control  the  labor 
market  and  secure  a  monopoly  of  labor.  The  selfish, 
greedy  masters  may  be  able  in  many  instances  to 
force  the  wages  of  the  members  above  the  normal 
level;  but  in  their  constant  wars  with  the  ninety 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  123 

per  cent,  independent  unorganized  labor,  and  with 
employers  against  whom  there  are  daily  strikes,  the 
amount  of  wage  paid  above  the  normal  level,  is  more 
than  swept  away,  clearly  shows  the  fact  that  in  this 
particular  also,  injustice  is  unprofitable.  Even  if 
we  did  not  take  into  account  the  losses  by  strikes, 
the  amount  of  wage  paid  above  the  normal  level  of 
the  wage  scale,  would  be  more  than  consumed  by 
the  expensive  administrative  officials,  staffs,  organ- 
izers, business  agents  and  walking  delegates  of  the 
unions,  whose  greed  is  always  in  evidence  and  who 
are  not  held  responsible  for  their  conduct  by  an 
intelligent,  free  and  independent  constituency.  When 
the  masters  point  with  pride  to  the  advance  in  wages 
secured  for  the  members  by  strike,  they  do  not  point 
to  the  cost  in  securing  the  advance,  the  loss  of  wages 
by  strikers,  and  the  amounts  of  fees  and  penalties 
paid  to  union  officials,  and  the  great  wrong  done  to 
men  prevented  from  exercising  their  right  to  labor. 
If  the  community  is  to  be  reckoned  with  in  estimat- 
ing the  benefits  and  losses,  we  find  that  the  losses 
of  life  and  property  caused  by  the  unions,  make 
their  unjust  and  criminal  conduct  exceedingly  un- 
profitable. Think  of  the  masters  constantly  making 
war  on  the  industrial  activities  of  the  country  for 
the  purpose  of  securing  a  monopoly  of  all  the  labor 
for  less  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the  laboring  classes, 
by  robbing  of  their  rights  and  leaving  unprovided 
for,  ninety  per  cent,  of  those  classes.  This  supreme 
selfishness  of  the  union  slavery,  with  its  many  acts 
of  lawlessness,  and  bloody  violence  wherever  it 


124  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

fastens  itself  on  a  community,  has  been  very  unprofit- 
able. But  it  may  be  asked,  is  not  this  selfish  greed 
profitable  to  the  masters  who  lay  under  tribute  the 
public  and  employers  and  extort  from  the  simple- 
minded  members  of  the  unions,  their  earnings,  and 
deprive  free  workers  of  the  opportunity  of  sharing 
in  the  benefits  of  honest  toil?  We  reply  that  such 
ill-gotten  gain  may  be  considered  profitable  in  the 
sense  that  the  loot  of  the  bandit  or  burglar  is  profit- 
able to  him.  But  no  sane  man  who  feels  an  interest 
in  the  common  welfare  of  the  community,  will  con- 
tend that  gain  obtained  under  such  conditions  as 
control  with  the  union  officials,  is  profitable  to  all 
concerned,  to  society  at  large. 

It  would  doubtless  be  an  interesting  chapter  in 
unionism,  if  the  public  could  know  the  number  of 
strikes  called  off  by  the  masters  who  were  "  in- 
sulted "  by  the  agents  of  employers  putting  hundred 
dollar  bills  on  their  desks  in  the  ante-rooms  of  sa- 
loons while  they  were  watching  the  tricks  slant-eyed. 
It  is  not  likely  that  there  are  many  masters  who  are 
not  "  onto  their  jobs  "  in  pinching  employers  in 
this  manner.  How  else  could  the  representatives  of 
grinding  toil  afford  to  ride  in  automobiles  in  attend- 
ing to  the  business  of  their  slaves  ?  But  what  honest 
man  will  contend  that  strikes  settled  in  this  manner 
are  profitable  to  the  union  slaves,  or  to  anybody 
except  the  selfish  masters? 

The  teachings  of  hate  and  selfishness  in  the  unions 
are  unprofitable  to  all  except  the  masters,  who  have 
shown  themselves  unwilling  to  do  anything  towards 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  125 

strengthening  the  ties  that  should  bind  our  people 
together  in  common  fellowship  and  interests. 

It  has  been  the  history  of  great  national  evils  that 
they  go  on  increasing  the  burden  of  oppression  until 
they  become  so  unbearable  to  the  moral  and  liberty- 
loving  part  of  society,  that  organized  opposition  de- 
velopes  to  check  the  pretentious  and  harmful  sway 
of  their  proponents.  It  was  so  with  the  evil  of  negro 
slavery  whose  proponents  were  constantly  making 
exasperating  and  humiliating  demands  of  those  who 
were  opposed  to  the  institution,  until  they  were 
aroused  to  strike  back,  and  in  thundering  tones  ex- 
posed the  iniquity  of  slavery  and  demanded  that  it 
should  be  excluded  from  the  territory  which  would 
come  in  as  new  states  north  of  a  certain  latitude. 
So  with  the  great  national  evil  of  union  slavery, 
organized  opposition  to  its  oppressions  and  crimes, 
is  springing  up  all  over  the  country  in  the  form 
of  the  open  shop  movement  and  citizens'  industrial 
associations,  which  promise  to  limit  its  further  ex- 
tension and  baneful  influence,  and  finally  overthrow 
it  as  completely  as  negro  slavery  was  overthrown. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
COERCIVE  METHODS  OF  THE  UNIONS. 

To  better  their  condition,  to  secure  better  wages, 
the  members  of  the  unions  must  either  persuade  or 
compel  their  present  employer  to  increase  their 
wages  or,  they  must  leave  him  and  seek  another 
employer  who  will  pay  them  more.  A  disinterested 
spectator  would  not  enter  any  objection  to  the  em- 
ployees leaving  their  present  employer  in  order  to 
better  their  condition,  to  secure  better  wages,  if  by 
so  doing  they  did  not  violate  a  contract.  But  to 
coerce  a  present  employer  to  increase  their  wages 
against  his  judgment  that  to  do  so  will  finally  bank- 
rupt him,  close  down  his  business  and  ruin  him,  is 
another  proposition.  He  should  know  better  than 
any  one  else  what  he  can  afford  to  do  in  managing 
his  business  so  that  he  will  not  be  forced  into  bank- 
ruptcy. His  employees  have  no  more  right,  individ- 
ually or  collectively,  to  coerce  him  into  making  a 
bargain  he  thinks  ruinous  to  his  interests,  than  he 
has  to  coerce  them  into  making  a  bargain  they  think 
ruinous  to  their  interests.  Any  attempt  at  coercion 
by  either  employee  or  employer,  destroys  the  good 
feeling  that  should  exist  between  them  in  their  bus- 
iness relations.  He  who  attempts  to  coerce  another 
possessing  self-respect  and  manhood,  arouses  a  bitter- 

126 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  127 

ness  of  feeling  in  that  other  which  will  not  down. 
An  employer  may  invest  thousands  of  dollars  in  put- 
ting up  a  building,  or  in  some  enterprise,  and  when 
far  advanced  towards  completion,  his  men  may  strike 
on  him  for  some  trifling  grievance,  perhaps  a  sym- 
pathy strike,  and  cause  him  much  annoyance  and 
heavy  loss,  and  possibly  force  him  to  come  to  their 
terms,  which  he  considers  unreasonable,  and  to  which 
he  would  not  yield  except  under  the  pressure  of 
unfair  advantage  taken  of  him;  but  such  a  policy 
of  organized  labor,  which  is  always  looking  for  an 
opportunity  to  take  unfair  advantage  of  employers, 
can  never  make  such  an  employer  its  friend.  In  all 
future  transactions  he  will  endeavor  to  get  along 
without  using  such  labor,  and  if  obliged  to  use  it  he 
will  endeavor  to  protect  himself  against  such  arbi- 
trary and  unjust  treatment.  There  may  be  unjust 
employers,  but  from  whatever  point  looked  at  the 
strike  of  the  members  of  a  union  can  not  be  justified 
as  a  means  of  redressing  grievances,  for  the  reason 
that  it  is  always  resorted  to  for  the  purpose  of  coerc- 
ing, punishing  or  injuring  the  employer,  and  for  the 
further  reason  when  it  is  used  as  a  club  of  coercion, 
it  always  acts  as  a  boomerang.  If  we  endeavor  to 
coerce  a  man  to  do  a  thing  which  he  declares  he  is 
unable  to  do  without  injury  to  himself  or  his  be- 
longings, and  then  proceed  to  punish  or  injure  him 
because  he  does  not  do  it,  we  ought  to  expect  our 
acts  to  arouse  in  him  a  feeling  of  resentment  such 
as  would  preclude  our  future  employment  by  him. 
No  man  who  is  fit  to  be  a  leader  of  organized  labor, 


128  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

will  knowiogly  advise  his  followers  against  their  in- 
terests, and  no  man  whose  reasoning  powers  have 
advanced  beyond  primitive  conditions,  will  advise 
them  to  accomplish  a  given  purpose  by  coercion,  pun- 
ishment or  injury  of  those  whom  they  would  have 
yield  to  their  desires.  Any  organization  to  have  the 
respect  and  sympathy  of  all  classes  in  this  country, 
should  be  able  to  write  upon  its  banners  "  equal 
rights  its  industrial  and  commercial  freedom  for 
all." 

An  organization  like  the  unions  whose  aim  and 
purposes  rests  upon  principles  of  injustice,  special 
privileges,  disregard  for  the  laws  of  the  land,  dis- 
regard for  the  equal  rights  of  others  outside  its 
ranks,  and  hatred  for  all  who  do  not  indorse  its 
principles  and  policies,  no  matter  how  powerful, 
must  sooner  or  later  crumble  to  pieces,  for  in  our 
modern  life  the  searchlight  of  criticism  is  certain  to 
be  thrown  upon  every  thought  or  action  offered  to 
the  public  for  consideration.  In  the  puffed  up  pride 
of  their  importance  the  leaders  of  organized  labor 
not  only  propose  in  bringing  about  a  strike,  to  injure 
and  inconvenience  their  own  followers,  and  the  em- 
ployer whom  they  desire  to  coerce  into  complying 
with  their  demands,  but  they  also  propose  to  punish, 
inconvenience,  injure  and  coerce  the  public  who  are 
innocent  parties  to  the  controversy,  in  an  equal  de- 
gree. Think  of  a  thousand  men  or  ten  thousand, 
voting  under  the  instructions  and  pressure  of  an 
organizer,  to  stop  work,  and  voluntarily  cutting  off 
for  themselves  and  for  their  families,  supplies  of 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  129 

food  and  clothing  and  shelter  and  comforts,  for  an 
indefinite  period,  for  the  purpose  of  coercing  an 
employer  to  do  a  thing  which  he  declares  he  is  un- 
able to  do  without  entailing  a  loss  which  he  is  unable 
to  bear,  or  because  he  does  not  discharge  a  man 
whose  service  is  satisfactory,  and  against  whom  no 
one  brings  any  charge  except  that  he  is  a  free  and 
independent  worker.  If  the  hundred  men  or  the 
thousand  men  of  the  union  could  make  the  em- 
ployer whom  their  conduct  is  intended  to  affect,  suf- 
fer as  much  as  their  aggregate  suffering,  or  injure 
him  as  much  as  their  aggregate  injuries,  there  would 
still  be  no  business  sense  in  a  strike  except  that  it 
may  be  profitable  to  the  manager  of  it  who  always 
has  a  selfish  interest  in  its  success,  an  interest  en- 
tirely distinct  from  that  of  the  members.  An  animal 
so  game  as  to  attack  another  animal  more  powerful 
and  which  is  certain  to  destroy  it  we  all  agree  dis- 
plays bad  judgment,  and  if  all  the  members  of  its 
species  are  similarly  lacking  in  judgment  in  attack- 
ing more  powerful  animals,  its  race  must  gradually 
disappear.  So  with  the  unions,  if  they  continue  to 
attack  adversaries  from  whom  they  receive  harder 
blows  than  they  are  able  to  give,  they  must  gradually 
disappear.  Those  who  have  controlled  and  directed 
the  principles  and  policies  of  labor  organizations, 
have  never  been  able  to  see  that  their  attacks  on  the 
prosperity  of  communities  and  individuals,  must  of 
necessity  affect  their  followers  as  well  as  those 
whom  they  would  ruin. 
In  times  of  negro  slavery  the  slaves  were  coerced 


130  THE  WHITE  SLAVEKY 

by  their  masters  to  do  their  bidding,  which  some- 
times caused  a  feeling  of  strong  resentment,  even  in 
a  slave.  But  since  the  overthrow  of  slavery  there 
has  been  a  decided  change  in  regard  to  the  use  of 
coercive  methods  as  a  controlling  or  governing 
agency  in  the  family,  in  the  public  schools,  and  in 
the  army  and  navy,  and  in  its  place  there  has  been 
substituted  a  milder  system  of  control  and  guidance 
based  upon  love  and  persuasion  and  appeal  to  the 
individual's  sense  of  justice,  fairness  and  self-re- 
spect. Even  in  the  treatment  of  the  inmates  of  in- 
sane asylums  the  harsh  methods  of  coercion  are  being 
abolished  and  the  more  rational  method  of  kindness 
and  persuasion  substituted.  In  the  control  of  hard- 
ened criminals  in  many  of  our  penal  institutions, 
severe  coercive  methods  are  not"  allowed.  Those 
who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and  policies 
of  the  unions,  are  strangers  to  progress,  strangers  to 
the  amenities  of  life,  strangers  to  any  form  of  guid- 
ance of  conduct  that  would  abolish  the  harsh  and 
barbarous  method  of  coercion  in  the  dealings  be- 
tween men  where  each  should  be  free  to  accept  or 
reject  the  proposition  of  the  other. 

We  have  made  such  progress  in  the  development 
of  sympathy  and  a  moral  sense,  that  we  have  so- 
cieties for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  children  and 
animals,  and  a  man  may  not  coerce  his  horse  too 
severely  without  liability  to  arrest  and  fine.  A 
policeman  with  his  billy  may  coerce  a  malefactor 
into  submission;  but  free  men  dealing  with  each 
other  on  terms  of  equality,  if  they  cannot  come  to 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  131 

an  agreement  in  regard  to  an  issue  between  them, 
neither  should  attempt  to  coerce  the  other  into  com- 
pliance with  his  view  of  the  matter.  He  who  at- 
tempts to  coerce  another  into  compliance  with  his 
views,  demands  more  rights,  more  privileges  than 
he  is  willing  to  concede  to  that  other.  Coercion  is  a 
prominent  feature  of  unionism,  a  feature  too  that 
must  meet  with  active  opposition  and  resentment 
from  all  intelligent  men  of  independent  minds  who 
possess  a  sense  of  justice  and  right.  In  the  evolu- 
tion of  sympathy  and  a  moral  sense,  we  are  begin- 
ning to  demand  less  coercion  and  cruelty  in  the  con- 
trol of  criminals  and  lunatics  in  the  prisons  and 
asylums  of  this  country,  than  formerly  in  spite  of 
the  coercive  methods  of  the  unions,  so  painfully  no- 
ticeable in  all  their  conduct.  Indeed  we  are  begin- 
ning to  regard  convicted  criminals  so  much  the  vic- 
tims of  circumstances,  of  heredity  and  environment, 
that  there  is  less  desire  than  formerly  for  punishing 
them  according  to  their  crimes,  but  instead  a  de- 
mand that  they  be  effectually  restrained  from  con- 
tinuing criminal  careers.  Now  unionism  appears 
totally  unconscious  of  the  growth  of  this  humane 
and  altruistic  sentiment,  extended  even  to  criminals, 
and  endeavors  to  enforce  its  dictum  of  coercion  in 
its  dealings  with  men,  employers  and  independent 
workers  of  the  kindliest  natures,  who  do  not  demand 
more  rights,  more  privileges,  more  freedom  of  action 
than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  all  others.  All 
men  with  the  instinct  of  freedom  and  justice  will 
resist  any  attempt  to  be  coerced  into  making  a  deal 


132  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

that  they  think  injurious  as  well  as  humiliating  and 
destructive  of  their  individuality.  Such  a  method 
of  securing  benefits  has  only  to  be  pointed  out  to  be 
condemned  by  all  right-minded  men  who  feel  an 
interest  in  advancing  the  public  welfare. 

The  men  who  would  use  coercion  to  enforce  their 
demands  upon  others  in  business  matters,  are  tyrants 
and  masters  who  have  slaves  to  do  their  bidding, 
slaves  who  have  no  conception  of  justice  and  the 
kindly  relations  that  should  exist  between  free  men 
in  their  dealings  with  each  other.  While  the  unions 
are  generally  referred  to  as  voluntary  organiza- 
tions in  which  the  members  join  freely  and  with- 
out any  mental  reservation  and  on  their  own 
motion,  it  is  well  known  that  their  membership  is 
secured  almost  entirely  by  coercive  methods  and 
by  intimidation.  No  man  who  is  not  a  slave,  will, 
at  the  suggestion  of  another,  be  a  party  to  coercing 
a  free  man  to  make  a  bargain  which  he  thinks  would 
be  against  his  interests,  and  humiliating  to  his  self- 
respect,  or  to  discharge  a  man  whose  service  is  sat- 
isfactory and  who  is  satisfied  with  his  wages  and 
treatment.  No  man  who  is  not  a  slave,  will,  at  the 
dictation  of  another,  be  a  party  to  coercing  a  free 
man  to  give  up  his  job  because  he  does  not  surrender 
his  freedom  and  self-respect  and  join  the  union, 
and  does  not  wish  to  pay  the  masters  for  permission 
to  work,  and  to  encourage  them  in  their  acts  of 
selfish  greed.  No  man  who  is  not  a  slave  will  be  a 
party  to  coercing  another  to  join  the  union  and 
starve  his  wife  and  children  by  giving  his  wages  to 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  133 

the  men  who  have  no  other  than  a  selfish  interest 
in  the  matter.  That  the  masters  use  the  members 
for  such  purposes  of  coercion,  will  hardly  be  ques- 
tioned from  any  source. 

The  masters  who  control  and  use  the  members  to 
coerce  employers  into  making  bargains  which  they 
think  are  against  their  interests  and  humiliating  to 
their  self-respect  and  to  discharge  independent  work- 
ers whose  services  are  satisfactory  and  who  are  satis- 
fied with  their  wages  and  treatment ;  or  to  coerce  in- 
dependent workers  to  give  up  their  jobs  or  join  the 
union,  or  suffer  the  consequences  of  brutal  treatment 
by  hired  thugs  and  sluggers  of  the  union,  or  to  coerce 
business  men  to  yield  to  union  demands  or  suffer  the 
consequences  of  boycott,  destruction  of  property,  riot 
and  bloodshed,  are  the  men  who  should  be  held  up 
to  public  reprobation,  as  the  enemies  of  industrial 
freedom,  social  order  and  fraternal  relations  among 
all  classes.  To  coerce  employers,  independent  work- 
ers and  other  classes  of  citizens  and  even  commun- 
ities, to  yield  to  unjust  union  demands,  or  even  just 
demands,  can  never  bring  about  that  mutual  good 
will  and  fraternal  feeling,  which  are  the  ideals  for 
which  all  altruistically  inclined  men  are  willing  to 
strive.  To  coerce  a  man  to  do  a  thing  he  is  unwilling 
to  do  on  his  own  motion,  is  to  destroy  his  liberty, 
his  freedom  and  make  a  slave  of  him.  The  union 
officials  not  only  endeavor  to  coerce  employers  to 
yield  to  their  demands,  to  supervise  their  business 
in  various  ways,  but  if  the  employer  becomes  obstin- 
ate, and  refuses  to  yield  they  at  once  commence  to 


134  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

inaugurate  a  reign  of  terror,  riot  and  destruction  of 
property,  to  coerce  the  community  to  intervene  and 
compel  the  employer  to  yield  to  the  union  demands. 
They  not  only  endeavor  to  coerce  city  councils  to 
give  the  unions  all  public  work,  but  they  also  en- 
deavor to  coerce  them  to  require  the  union  label,  the 
trade-mark  of  the  union  slavery,  to  be  put  on  all 
city  printing,  by  threatening  to  mass  the  union  labor 
vote  to  defeat  all  members  of  the  council  who  stand 
for  reelection  and  who  refuse  to  indorse  and  work 
for  measures  discriminating  in  favor  of  union  labor 
as  against  free  labor  and  the  open  shop.  They  en- 
deavor to  coerce  the  Congress  to  amend  the  Sherman 
anti-trust  law  so  that  nothing  in  it  "  shall  be  con- 
strued as  to  apply  to  trades  unions  or  other  labor 
organizations,"  even  when  the  acts  of  labor  organiza- 
tions are  openly  in  restraint  of  interstate  commerce, 
by  threatening  to  mass  the  union  labor  vote  against 
the  Congressmen  who  stand  for  re-election  and  who 
have  the  honesty  of  purpose  to  act  according  to  their 
convictions  and  to  oppose  the  proposed  amendment 
and  defy  the  threats  of  its  proponents.  They  have 
attempted  to  coerce  the  courts  of  the  country  into 
conniving  at  the  lawless, acts  of  the  unions  by  having 
them  refuse  to  issue  injunctions  or  restraining 
orders  to  prevent  destruction  of  property  and  in- 
timidation of  independent  workers  by  the  union 
slaves,  by  threatening  revolution  and  the  ignoring 
of  the  restraining  orders  of  the  courts  and  inducing 
their  slaves  to  ignore  them.  They  have  time  and 
again  attempted  to  coerce  the  business  and  law-abid- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  135 

ing  people  of  the  country  into  acquiescing  in  and 
tolerating  a  carnival  of  selfishness,  hate  and  crime 
of  the  unions  for  the  purpose  of  giving  them  special 
privileges  and  immunities,  special  privileges  to  mon- 
opolize all  the  work  and  fix  the  rate  of  wages,  and 
special  immunity  from  prosecution  and  punishment 
for  their  lawless  acts,  by  threatening  to  tie  up  all 
the  business  of  the  country  if  they  were  not  per- 
mitted to  have  their  way. 

They  have  coerced  the  members  of  the  unions  into 
such  slavish  obedience  and  fear  that  they  dare  not 
demand  that  their  sons  be  permitted  to  serve  appren- 
ticeships in  any  of  the  trades  for  which  they  desire 
to  fit  them  for  leading  useful  lives  and  good  loyal 
citizens.  They  have  coerced  the  members  into  such 
slavish  obedience  and  fear  that  on  intimation  of 
the  masters,  they  relentlessly  persecute  their  brother 
members  who  have  incurred  the  displeasure  or  curse 
of  unions,  by  refusing  to  starve  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren that  they  may  give  of  their  wages  to  support  in 
luxury  labor  parasites.  They  have  coerced  the  mem- 
bers into  such  slavish  obedience  and  fear,  that  they 
give  up  without  protest  their  wages  to  the  labor 
officials  for  purposes  which  cannot  possibly  benefit 
them  directly  or  indirectly. 

The  coercive  methods  of  the  masters  are  more  gall- 
ing and  oppressive  to  the  men  who  have  not  had  the 
spirit  of  freedom  and  manhood  ground  out  of  them, 
than  were  the  coercive  methods  of  the  masters  of 
negro  slavery  to  their  slaves.  This  coercive  idea  run- 
ning all  through  the  administrative  acts  of  the 


136  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

unions,  which  takes  no  account  of  individual  free- 
dom and  equal  rights,  is  one  of  the  most  prominent 
features  of  primitive  life  when  the  chief's  word  was 
law  to  those  over  whom  he  exercised  authority.  In 
the  present  stage  of  our  civilization  and  of  our  moral 
and  intellectual  development,  coercion  should  find 
no  place  in  the  dealings  between  men  who  value 
their  liberty  and  individuality;  that  it  should  be 
exercised  only  in  dealing  with  the  feeble-minded, 
vicious  and  criminal  elements  of  society,  and  then  as 
sparingly  as  possible.  Every  man  who  possesses  an 
instinct  of  freedom  and  feels  that  he  is  the  peer, 
the  equal  of  every  other  man,  rebels  at  the  thought 
of  being  coerced  into  doing  a  thing  which  he  knows 
it  is  his  duty  to  do,  or  being  coerced  into  doing  a 
thing  which  he  knows  that  he  should  not  do.  All 
the  oppressions,  all  the  unspeakable  outrages  for 
which  the  unions  are  responsible,  have  been  the 
natural  consequences  of  their  unrestrained  and  un- 
opposed activity  along  lines  and  against  interests 
which  should  years  ago  have  aroused  strong  organ- 
ized opposition.  Organized  labor  has  less  than  ten 
per  cent,  of  the  laboring  classes  in  its  ranks,  and 
that  this  insignificant  faction  of  labor  should  be 
allowed  to  dominate  all  other  labor  and  all  other 
interests,  and  carry  on  its  criminal  operations,  in 
order  to  have  a  monopoly  of  labor,  shows  the  strong 
necessity  that  exists  for  the  organization  of  all  law- 
abiding  elements  to  check  its  pretensions  and  op- 
pressive conduct.  What  could  be  more  cowardly 
depraved  and  wanting  in  manliness  and  courage, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  137 

than  for  half  a  dozen  or  more  union  labor  strikers 
and  sluggers,  picketing  the  path  of  an  Independent 
worker  and  as  he  passes  along  going  to  or  returning 
from  his  work  to  earn  wages  to  buy  food,  clothing 
and  comforts  for  his  wife  and  children,  pounce  upon 
him  and  beat  him  to  death  with  sticks  and  stones  and 
missiles,  because  he  would  not  surrender  his  indi- 
viduality as  an  American  freeman  and  be  coerced 
by  their  threats,  into  desisting  from  work  to  enable 
them  to  coerce  the  employer  ?  This  kind  of  conduct 
of  the  unions  is  an  almost  daily  occurrence  in  some 
parts  of  the  country,  which  forces  us  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  we  are  departing  from  the  idea  of  which 
our  fathers  were  fond  of  boasting,  that  this  is  "  the 
land  of  the  free  and  the  home  of  the  brave. "  The 
law-abiding  elements  of  the  country,  have  long  rested 
in  the  belief  that  the  laws  which  they  have  helped 
to  make,  and  the  courts  which  they  have  helped  to 
establish,  were  sufficient  to  safeguard  their  lives, 
their  liberty  and  their  property,  and  have  felt  it 
unnecessary  to  join  a  vast  viligance  committee  to 
keep  in  subjection  the  lawless  and  vicious  elements 
like  the  unions,  or  to  take  an  active  part  in  electing 
officers  who  will  enforce  the  laws  without  fear  or 
favor.  Too  often  good  substantial  citizens  have 
prided  themselves  on  the  little  interest  they  took  in 
politics  and  of  their  indifference  as  to  who  were  can- 
didates for  positions  as  officers  to  enforce  the  laws. 
They  forget  that  eternal  viligance  is  the  price  of 
liberty,  and  that  the  alien  bandits  and  proponents 
of  coercion  who  wage  constant  war  on  the  industrial 


138  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

and  business  interests  of  the  country,  never  sleep. 
The  coercive  methods  of  the  unions  under  the  ab- 
solutism of  the  leaders  who  control  and  direct  the 
principles,  policies  and  conduct  of  the  organization, 
are  of  that  malicious  character  which  tends  to  crush 
the  instinct  of  freedom  out  of  a  man;  the  kind  of 
coercion  that  the  master  exercises  over  his  slaves; 
the  kind  of  coercion  the  primitive  chief  exercises 
over  the  members  of  his  tribe;  the  kind  of  coercion 
that  the  tyrant  and  despot  exercises  over  his  sub- 
jects. Is  it  not  a  more  despotic  and  meaner  coercion 
than  a  master  would  exercise  over  his  slave,  or  a 
despotic  ruler  over  his  subjects,  for  the  leaders  of 
the  unions  to  have  a  poor  member  fined  five  dollars 
for  buying  a  stove  where  he  can  get  the  best  bargain, 
and  to  expel  him  and  persecute  him  to  distraction 
if  he  repeats  the  offense?  And  yet  this  despotic 
coercion  and  persecution  of  members  of  the  unions 
is  often  exercised,  and  any  working  member  who 
should  have  the  hardihood  to  offer  his  protest,  would, 
at  the  instigation  of  the  trained  labor  agitator,  be 
howled  down  with  a  storm  of  hisses  and  cries  of 
"  scab,"  and  probably  thrown  out.  In  fact  the 
methods  and  policies  of  the  unions  in  making  slaves, 
is  as  heartless  as  the  conduct  of  African  chiefs  who 
made  raids  into  the  territory  of  neighboring  tribes 
for  the  purpose  of  capturing  people  of  their  own  race 
to  sell  into  slavery.  Think  of  a  union  organizer 
taking  along  with  him,  two  or  three  weak-minded 
men  to  convince  an  honest  independent  toiler  that 
it  is  his  duty  to  join  the  union  if  he  would  escape  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  139 

charge  of  "  scab,"  and  the  contempt  and  hatred  of 
all  other  men.  Think  of  the  cowardly  spectacle  of 
two,  three  or  four  union  pickets  armed  with  clubs 
and  bludgeons,  as  emblems  of  their  lamb-like  natures, 
waylaying  the  path  of  an  independent  worker  to 
intercept  him  going  to  or  returning  from  his  work, 
to  convince  him  of  their  peaceful  intentions  and  in- 
terest in  him,  which,  if  he  does  not  see  and  appreci- 
ate, he  may  expect  to  be  sent  to  the  hospital  or  his 
grave.  This  is  the  kind  of  persuasion  which  the 
union  officials  demand  they  shall  be  protected  by 
legislation  in  exercising.  If  the  slaves  or  hired  thugs 
and  sluggers  of  the  unions  are  found  crouched  ready 
to  spring  upon  and  assassinate  their  intended  victim, 
the  free  independent  worker  while  exercising  his 
lawful  right  to  work,  are  restrained  by  an  injunc- 
tive  order  of  the  court  of  competent  jurisdiction  from 
completing  their  fiendish  act,  the  masters  set  up  a 
terrible  howl  about  the  members  of  their  organiza- 
tion being  deprived  of  their  liberty,  and  hurl  defi- 
ance at  the  court,  which  defiance  is  heard  from  "  the 
master  of  a  million  minds  "  down  to  the  business 
agent  of  the  local.  In  primitive  life  before  the  moral 
sense  had  been  developed  in  our  ancestors,  practi- 
cally all  benefits  were  secured  by  coercion,  and  coer- 
cion of  the  fiercest  kind,  but  in  modern  life  all  bene- 
fits worth  having,  are  secured  by  honest  effort,  mu- 
tual good  will  and  free  contracting  between  men. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  INDEPENDENT  WORKMAN  INVESTI- 
GATES. 

When  we  consider  the  strong  pressure  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  independent  workman  of  any  of  the 
trades  to  get  him  to  surrender  his  independence  and 
industrial  freedom  and  join  the  union  and  he  does 
not  do  it,  we  may  know  that  he  finds  sufficient  rea- 
son in  his  own  mind  for  not  yielding  to  such  pres- 
sure. We  may  suppose  that  he  listens  to  the  argu- 
ments of  his  friends,  and  perhaps  the  organizer,  of 
the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  belonging  to  the 
union.  We  may  suppose  that  he  is  a  man  of  indi- 
viduality and  who  believes  in  independence  and  of 
a  freedom  of  action  limited  only  by  the  like  freedom 
of  all  other  men.  We  may  suppose  that  he  is  a 
plain,  common,  level-headed  man  who  is  in  the  habit 
of  looking  at  all  sides  of  a  question  before  deciding 
what  to  do  in  any  given  case.  When  his  friends  and 
the  organizer  take  him  up  on  the  mountain  to  be- 
hold the  beauties  of  unionism,  of  which  the  industrial 
world  has  decidedly  different  views,  he  determines 
to  investigate  and  look  at  the  condition  of  his  fellow 
tradesmen  who  are  claimed  by  many  to  have  sur- 
rendered their  independence  and  industrial  freedom 
to  the  unions,  and  asks  himself  if  it  would  be  possible 

140 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  141 

for  him  with  such  surrender  of  independence  to  at- 
tain that  ideal  state  of  comfort  and  happiness  for 
himself  and  family  which  he  believes  that  his  own 
initiative  and  energj^  under  fair  and  just  laws  will 
gradually  bring.  In  his  search  for  information  to 
guide  him  as  to  the  best  course  of  action  for  him  to 
pursue,  he  finds  only  a  small  percentage  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  unions  who  own  their  homes  and  the 
comforts  that  naturally  attach  to  the  home.  He 
analyzes  the  situation  further  and  sees  why  it  is  im- 
possible for  the  members  of  the  unions  to  save  enough 
of  their  earnings  to  buy  a  home  and  secure  the  com- 
forts which  he  would  like  to  have  around  him.  In 
his  investigation  for  light  and  facts  to  enable  him 
to  determine  whether  it  will  be  to  his  interest  as 
well  as  to  the  interest  of  society  at  large  for  him 
to  join  the  union,  he  no  where  finds  that  its  leaders, 
or  its  principles  and  policies,  try  to  impress  upon  its 
members,  ideas  of  thrift  and  economy,  with  the  view 
of  having  each  member  gradually  become  independ- 
ent and  a  substantial  citizen  of  the  community. 
He  soon  finds  that  for  a  member  to  even  whisper 
"  independence  "  and  ability  to  get  along  without 
the  union,  is  treason  to  the  organization.  He  also 
finds  that  commendable  loyalty  to  the  organization 
requires  a  member  to  hate  our  government,  its  flag, 
its  laws,  and  its  courts  and  in  all  his  conduct  to  give 
his  first  allegiance  to  the  union,  and  if  the  decrees 
of  his  union  require  him  to  do  one  thing,  and  the 
decrees  of  the  courts  require  him  to  do  another,  to 
ignore  them  and  observe  the  decrees  of  his  union. 


142  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

The  want  of  patriotism  and  respect  for  the  laws  of 
the  country,  and  the  lack  of  interest  in  the  common 
welfare,  everywhere  manifested  by  the  unions,  im- 
presses the  independent  worker  of  the  dangerous 
tendencies  of  the  organization  towards  insurrection, 
socialism  and  anarchy.  He  finds  that  the  socialists 
are  rapidly  becoming  the  controlling  influence  in 
unionism,  and  openly  preach  the  destruction  of  prop- 
erty rights,  the  abolition  of  the  marriage  relation, 
and  the  substitution  of  communism  and  all  it  stands 
for. 

This  teaching  of  hate  by  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  for  nearly  everything  that  free  men  regard 
as  essential  to  organized  society,  chills  the  enthu- 
siasm of  the  independent  workman  for  the  union ;  for 
jn  his  conception  of  an  ideal  social  state  there  must 
be  perfect  freedom  and  independence  of  the  indi- 
vidual, brotherly  love  and  respect  for  his  neighbors, 
with  no  desire  to  claim  more  privileges  and  wider 
activities  for  himself  than  he  is  willing  to  concede 
to  all  others.  Indeed  it  seems  to  him  to  be  the  policy 
of  labor  leaders  to  bring  such  great  losses  upon 
organized  labor  by  strikes,  penalties  and  squeezing 
of  the  members,  as  to  keep  them  in  a  hopeless  state 
of  dependence  in  order  that  they  may  be  the  more 
easily  controlled.  Before  the  emancipation  of  the 
negro  slaves  it  was  quite  a  common  practice  for  white 
preachers  to  preach  to  the  slaves  that  slavery  was 
better  for  them  than  freedom,  just  as  the  masters 
of  the  union  slaves  preach  to  them  that  it  is  better 
for  them  to  surrender  their  independence  and  free- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  143 

dom  to  the  union,  than  it  is  to  be  free  men  and  act  in- 
dependently and  on  their  own  initiative.  Our  inde- 
pendent worker  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
struggle  is  not  really  between  capital  and  labor,  but 
between  freedom  and  slavery,  between  those  who 
contend  that  the  individual  should  surrender  his  in- 
dependence and  industrial  freedom  to  the  union,  and 
those  who  believe  in  the  independence  of  the  individ- 
ual and  his  freedom  to  act  on  his  own  initiative  lim- 
ited only  by  the  like  freedom  of  all  others.  He  sees 
early  in  his  investigation  that  when  a  man  surrenders 
his  independence,  individuality  and  freedom  to  an- 
other or  to  an  organization,  he  is  no  longer  free  to 
move  and  have  his  being  and  to  act  on  his  own  initia- 
tive on  all  matters  concerning  his  interest  and  wel- 
fare, like  the  man  who  refuses  to  surrender  his  inde- 
pendence and  individuality  to  another  and  claims  the 
right  and  freedom  guaranteed  to  him  by  the  laws  of 
the  country,  to  do  all  that  he  wills  provided  that  he 
does  not  infringe  the  equal  freedom  of  all  others. 
He  knows  that  the  man  who  asserts  his  independ- 
ence and  believes  in  equal  rights,  is  not  obliged  to 
seriously  injure  himself  and  his  family  for  the  pur- 
pose of  injuring  some  other  man,  as  every  unionist 
must  do  in  every  strike.  His  conception  of  ethical 
doctrine  has  led  him  to  the  conclusion  that  when 
men  shall  be  guided  by  the  principles  of  equal  free- 
dom, equal  rights ;  that  when  each  shall  firmly  deter- 
mine to  demand  no  more  rights,  privileges  or  free- 
dom of  action  for  himself  than  he  is  willing  to  con- 
cede to  all  others,  that  there  will  be  practically  no 


144  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

friction  between  men  in  their  dealings  with  each 
other.  He  finds  it  difficult  to  understand  how  there 
should  be  opposition  to  this  simple  proposition  of 
equal  rights  where  all  claim  to  be  free,  but  in  his 
investigation  of  the  principles  and  policies  of  the 
unions  he  finds  that  they  totally  ignore  the  equal 
right  of  all  outside  their  ranks  and  assert  the  priv- 
ilege of  trespassing  upon  the  rights  and  interests  of 
those  who  oppose  their  policy.  He  finds  that  the 
unions  while  claiming  the  right  to  bull  the  labor 
market,  to  monopolize  the  labor  of  the  country, 
denies  the  right  of  another  larger  class  of  labor, 
independent  labor,  to  compete  with  them  individu- 
ally in  that  market.  He  also  finds  that  the  unions 
not  only  denies  to  the  independent  workers  who  will 
not  join  them,  the  right  to  compete  in  the  labor 
market  with  them,  but  will  not  allow  any  of  their 
members  to  work  on  the  same  job  with  independent 
workers.  He  finds  that  when  an  employer  of  labor 
has  union  men  working  for  him  and  wishes  to  take 
on  other  men  and  they  are  independent  workers,  the 
union  men  at  once  demand  as  a  condition  that  they 
continue  to  work,  that  he  shall  discharge  the  inde- 
pendent workmen.  The  investigating  workman  is 
told  by  members  of  the  unions  that  the  employment 
of  independent  workers  by  employers  has  been  one 
of  the  very  common  causes  which  have  led  the  unions 
to  order  their  members  to  strike.  He  is  told  that  if 
an  employer  has  independent  workmen  engaged  and 
wishes  to  employ  other  men,  and  they  are  members 
of  the  unions,  that  they  will  not  work  for  him  until 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  145 

he  agrees  to  discharge  the  independent  workmen. 
But  he  knows  that  the  ethics  of  the  independent 
workman  never  demands  the  discharge  of  a  union 
man  working  for  an  employer  if  he  should  wish  to 
work  beside  the  independent  worker.  He  sees  that 
the  union  man,  or  the  union,  to  which  he  has  sur- 
rendered his  independence,  for  him,  ignores  the 
principles  of  equal  rights  and  demands  more  rights, 
more  privileges,  for  himself  than  he  is  willing  to  con- 
cede to  another;  demands  that  the  employer  dis- 
charge the  independent  worker,  and  give  his  place 
to  a  unionist ;  but  will  not  concede  that  the  employer 
should  discharge  the  union  man  and  give  his  place 
to  the  independent  worker,  no  matter  how  undeserv- 
ing the  union  man  and  how  deserving  the  independ- 
ent workman.  Here  the  independent  workman  in 
his  investigation  is  impressed  that  the  principles  and 
policies  of  unionism  are  utterly  selfish  and  incapable 
of  arousing  sympathy  in  its  members  for  the  suffer- 
ings of  others,  or  inspiring  them  with  respect  for 
the  equal  rights  of  those  outside  its  ranks.  He  sees 
how  impossible  it  is  for  the  unionist  with  his  narrow 
and  clanish  view  of  life,  to  ever  perform  any  truly 
patriotic  or  altruistic  act.  He  has  come  to  look  at 
every  step  in  the  recognition  by  men  of  each  others 
equal  rights  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness, as  a  step  in  progress,  and  every  step  of  any 
organization  which  demands  more  rights,  privileges 
or  liberty  of  action  than  it  is  willing  to  concede  to 
all  others,  as  a  step  towards  primitive  conditions. 
He  no  where  finds  in  all  the  discussions  of  unionism, 


146  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

anything  said  about  equal  rights,  or  any  indication 
that  the  unions  are  willing  to  treat  independent 
workers  with  fairness,  justice  and  consideration.  He 
is,  however,  constantly  impressed  by  all  that  he  sees 
and  hears  from  union  sources,  that  because  an  inde- 
pendent workman  prefers  to  depend  on  his  own 
energy  and  initiative,  and  to  make  his  own  bargains 
with  an  employer,  that  he  is  regarded  by  the  mem- 
bers and  leaders  of  the  unions,  as  an  open  enemy. 
As  an  independent  workman  who  is  unwilling  to 
have  his  activities  restrained  except  by  the  like  re- 
straint on  the  activities  of  all  others,  he  looks  over 
the  economic  situation  and  asks  himself  whether  it 
will  be  more  profitable  to  him  to  depend  on  his  own 
initiative  and  energy,  or  whether  it  will  be  to  his 
interest  and  to  the  interest  of  all  other  men,  to  sur- 
render his  independence  and  freedom  of  action  to 
the  union  and  depend  upon  them  to  give  him  more 
steady  and  remunerative  employment,  without  injury 
or  loss  of  wages  to  others.  In  the  pride  of  his  healthy 
manhood  he  knows  that  he  would  prefer  to  live  in 
the  humblest  situation  with  his  independence  and 
freedom,  than  to  live  in  luxury  without  them,  or  to 
live  under  conditions  requiring  him  to  pay  masters 
for  permission  to  work,  and  give  a  lien  on  his  wages 
while  permitted  to  work.  Knowing  that  it  is  the 
function  of  the  state  or  the  government  to  protect 
him  in  his  equal  rights  to  life,  liberty  and  property, 
he  does  not  see  where  the  unions  can  be  any  benefit 
to  him,  and  he  prefers  to  depend  on  his  own  initiative 
and  judgment  in  working  out  the  fulfillment  of  his 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEKY  147 

ideals  of  life,  rather  than  be  hampered  by  the  whims 
of  labor  leaders  whom  he  is  unwilling  to  acknowl- 
edge as  his  superiors  in  tact  and  business  manage- 
ment, and  whose  records  for  lawlessness  and  violence 
are  not  attractive  to  him.  He  considers  it  insuffer- 
ably intolerable  that  the  leaders  of  the  unions  should 
assume  such  importance  as  to  regard  the  members 
as  grown  up  children  or  half-witted  men,  not  know- 
ing what  they  want,  and  not  to  be  held  responsible 
for  their  acts. 

Every  step  in  the  investigation  satisfies  the  inde- 
pendent worker  that  the  more  completely  men  sur- 
render their  independence  and  freedom,  the  greater 
must  be  their  disadvantages  in  the  struggle  for  life, 
disadvantages  which  must  descend  to  their  children. 
He  looks  at  the  homes  and  comforts  of  the  families 
of  the  members  of  the  unions  with  whom  he  is  asked 
to  surrender  his  independence  and  freedom,  and  he 
does  not  find  encouragement  to  warrant  it.  So  far 
as  he  is  able  to  ascertain  only  a  small  proportion  of 
the  members  own  their  homes,  and  his  information 
leads  him  to  conclude  that  the  leaders  do  not  encour- 
age the  members  to  save  their  earnings  during 
periods  of  prosperity  for  the  rainy  day  or  to  buy 
homes.  In  his  investigation  he  meets  with  the  com- 
mon story  of  members  of  the  unions  who,  having 
saved  up  considerable  sums  by  many  sacrifices,  were 
obliged  to  go  on  strike  on  account  of  some  trifling 
grievance  in  which  they  were  not  at  all  or  only  re- 
motely interested,  or  on  account  of  their  officials  call- 
ing it  for  a  blackmailing  consideration,  making  it 


148  THE  WHITE  SLAVEET 

necessary  to  spend  all  their  savings  during  the 
months  of  enforced  idleness.  His  inquiries  lead  him 
to  believe  that  those  members  of  the  unions  who  do 
save  part  of  their  earnings,  do  so  for  the  purpose  of 
having  accumulated  savings  to  tide  them  over  dur- 
ing periods  of  idleness  caused  by  probable  strikes, 
instead  of  to  invest  in  homes  and  comforts.  He 
knows  that  a  member  who  is  receiving  good  wages 
and  who  may  at  any  moment  be  called  out  on  strike, 
enforcing  him  to  idleness  for  several  months,  cannot 
safely  invest  his  surplus  earnings  in  a  home,  for  he 
may  need  them  to  meet  living  expenses  during  the 
period  of  idleness.  He  also  knows  that  if  a  member 
of  the  union  owns  a  home  and  with  others  is  ordered 
out  on  a  strike,  the  probability  is  he  will  not  go  back 
to  the  same  employer,  but  will  be  obliged  to  find 
employment  elsewhere,  making  it  necessary  to  sacri- 
fice his  home.  He  is  able  to  call  to  mind  instances 
where  thrifty  men  of  the  unions  who  had  paid  for 
comfortable  homes  out  of  their  savings,  but  who  were 
obliged  to  leave  them  and  go  to  some  other  place 
when  the  strike  upon  which  they  were  ordered  out, 
failed.  He  is  unable  to  understand  how  any  one 
with  a  rational  mind,  claiming  to  be  a  friend  of 
labor,  can  conscientiously  advise  laboring  men  who 
are  earning  an  honest  living  with  an  honest  employer 
and  no  grievance  against  him,  to  strike,  leave  their 
work,  with  nothing  else  in  sight.  So  far  as  the 
independent  workman  can  determine,  the  strike  in 
nearly  every  case,  hurts  the  striker  far  more  than  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  149 

employer  whom  it  is  intended  to  injure  and  punish, 
without  vindicating  any  worthy,  sane  principle. 

Believing  firmly  in  the  ethical  doctrine  that  we 
should  not  demand  more  freedom  of  action  in  carry- 
ing out  our  plans  of  life,  than  we  are  willing  to  con- 
cede to  all  others  in  carrying  out  their  plans  of  life, 
the  independent  worker  is  unable  to  harmonize  with 
his  views  of  that  doctrine,  the  practice  of  the  unions 
of  encouraging  their  members  to  become  disloyal  to 
their  employer  as  if  he  were  an  open  enemy,  and  to 
disregard  their  solemn  contracts  with  him  when  it 
suits  their  convenience.  If  disloyalty  to  employers, 
hatred  of  employers,  disregard  of  solemn  contracts 
with  employers,  and  surrender  of  independence  and 
freedom  of  the  individual  to  the  unions,  are  essen- 
tials of  the  ethics  of  the  unions,  our  independent 
worker  will  have  none  of  them.  As  the  unions  de- 
mand the  first  allegiance  of  their  members  to  their 
principles  and  policies,  which  are  often  antagonistic 
to  the  Government,  our  investigator  cannot  as  a  loyal 
citizen  of  the  Government,  subscribe  to  them,  or  even 
sympathize  with  them.  He  cannot  consent  to  put  him- 
self in  a  position,  where,  after  surrendering  his  inde- 
pendence and  freedom,  he  would  be  obliged  to  go  out 
on  a  strike  to  injure  himself  and  employer,  because 
some  men  in  another  part  of  the  country  have  gone 
on  a  strike  to  the  injury  of  themselves  and  their  em- 
ployers, on  account  of  a  grievance  of  which  he  knows 
nothing.  To  him  the  principles  and  policies  of  the 
unions  as  he  daily  sees  them  carried  out,  appear  de- 
structive of  the  independence  and  freedom  of  the 


150  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

individual  and  of  social  order,  without  which  he  feels 
it  is  impossible  to  have  a  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people. 

Our  investigating  worker  holds  that  we  should 
not  advise  a  man  to  do  a  thing  we  would  not  will- 
ingly do  if  we  were  in  his  place.  He  contends  that 
if  we  think  we  are  better  informed  as  to  what  is  best 
for  another  to  do  in  order  to  improve  his  present 
condition  and  secure  greater  comforts  and  happiness 
for  the  future,  we  should  not  advise  him  to  do  a  thing 
that  will  probably  impair  his  present  condition,  with- 
out giving  him  ample  security  that  the  thing  to  be 
done  will  not  injure  him.  He  contends  that  a  man 
of  wide  experience  who  has  seen  much  of  the  world 
and  is  capable  of  making  a  good  argument  on  either 
side  of  a  mooted  question,  should  not  take  advantage 
of  another  man's  weakness,  inexperience  or  preju- 
dice, to  persuade  him  to  do  a  thing  that  will  likely 
turn  out  to  be  to  his  detriment  and  injury.  He  con- 
tends that  heavy  responsibility  rests  upon  those  who 
make  it  their  business  to  influence  the  actions  of 
men  whose  lives  at  the  best  are  a  hard  struggle  for 
existence,  and  who  confide  to  them  their  interests. 
He  knows  that  when  a  grievance  against  an  employer 
is  regarded  as  sufficient  to  advise  a  strike,  that  the 
organizer  tells  the  members  of  the  union  that  there 
is  an  ample  fund  away  off  somewhere  to  provide  for 
them  while  the  strike  is  on  and  until  their  demands 
are  met  by  the  employer.  He  has  noticed  that  on 
first  going  out  the  strikers  appear  light-hearted  and 
joyous  and  buoyant,  and  if  it  is  picnic  season,  that 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  151 

they  are  likely  to  have  a  strikers  picnic  to  kill  the 
time  they  find  upon  their  hands,  which  hangs  heavy 
with  them  in  a  few  days.  He  further  observes  in 
the  course  of  the  strike  that  as  time  passes  and  the 
employer  does  not  yield  to  their  demands,  their  buoy- 
ant countenances  begin  to  change  to  expressions  of 
sadness  and  disappointment.  He  also  notices  that  a 
little  later  when  the  funds  from  the  last  payment 
from  the  employer  whom  they  had  voluntarily  left 
on  the  advice  of  the  organizer,  have  become  ex- 
hausted, and  grocery  bills  are  coming  in  and  other 
necessities  for  the  family  are  needed,  and  still  the 
employer  does  not  yield,  that  they  regard  the  situa- 
tion as  more  serious,  and  an  expression  of  despera- 
tion comes  over  their  countenances.  With  their  coun- 
tenances taking  on  a  deeper  shade  of  disappointment 
and  chagrin,  these  honest,  brawny  men  are  debating 
in  their  minds  whether  they  shall  go  to  the  aid  com- 
mittee for  assistance  from  the  benefit  fund,  or  whether 
they  shall  seek  other  employment  than  that  which 
they  left,  for  to  strong,  industrious  men  it  is  a  terri- 
ble trial  of  their  pride  to  march  up  as  mendicants  to 
the  aid  committee  to  ask  a  pittance  from  the  benefit 
or  defense  fund.  The  pittance  that  they  get  is  doled 
out  to  them  in  such  a  grudging  manner,  and  is  so  hu- 
miliating to  their  manhood,  that  rather  than  hang 
around  labor  headquarters  and  beg  for  it,  many  of 
them  with  overburdened  hearts,  either  seek  other  em- 
ployment, drown  their  trouble  in  drink,  or  let  their 
families  suffer.  In  the  course  of  a  week  or  so  when 
the  cup  of  bitterness  is  nearly  full,  the  strikers  have  a 


152  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

meeting  at  labor  headquarters,  perhaps  presided  over 
by  the  organizer,  and  appoint  a  committee  to  call  on 
the  employer  to  find  out  how  he  stands  and  if  there  is 
a  prospect  of  his  weakening.  He  receives  the  com- 
mittee cordially  and  in  the  conference  explains  to 
them  why  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  yield  to  their 
demands.  They  return  to  labor  headquarters  and 
report  the  result  of  their  conference,  but  endeavor 
to  convey  the  impression  to  the  public  that  the  em- 
ployer is  badly  crippled  in  his  business  and  will  cer- 
tainly yield  in  a  few  days.  Early  in  the  strike  the 
union  appoints  certain  of  its  members  as  pickets  to 
watch  the  employers  plant  or  place  of  business  to 
intercept  and  endeavor  to  persuade  with  clubs  and 
sticks  any  independent  workers  who  may  be  going 
there  to  seek  employment,  to  turn  back.  If  the  inde- 
pendent workers  slip  in  and  go  to  work  for  the  em- 
ployer, the  strikers  sometimes  become  desperate  on 
finding  it  out,  and  go  in  squads  to  attack  them,  then 
a  fierce  conflict  ensues,  ending  in  the  death  or  injury 
of  one  or  more  on  a  side,  and  the  calling  in  of  the 
law  officers  to  intervene  and  restore  order.  For  sev- 
eral weeks  perhaps  the  strikers  hang  around  labor 
headquarters  discussing  all  kinds  of  schemes  for 
compelling  the  employer  to  take  them  back  by  mak- 
ing some  kind  of  concession,  and  if  he  does  not,  how 
they  will  cripple  his  business  or  destroy  his  prop- 
erty. In  his  investigation  the  independent  worker 
finds  that  if  the  employer  was  inclined  to  take  back 
his  striking  employees  by  making  some  concessions, 
he  is  afraid  to  do  it  for  fear  that  they  will  regard 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  153 

his  act  as  weakness  and  prove  disloyal  to  him  again 
on  some  pretext  which  can  always  be  easily  raised. 
There  are  nearly  always  one  or  more  saloons  near 
labor  headquarters  frequented  by  the  strikers,  and 
the  investigating  worker  observes  that  a  strike  in- 
variably produces  utter  demoralization  of  the  men 
engaged  in  it,  and  that  it  is  during  such  labor  dis- 
turbances that  criminal  acts  are  of  most  frequent 
occurrence,  often  too  of  a  very  shocking  kind. 

The  independent  worker  finds  that  when  regularly 
employed,  the  members  of  a  union  are  assessed  for 
defense  funds,  fees  and  other  matters  connected  with 
their  standing  in  the  organization,  which  makes  a 
heavy  drain  on  their  wages,  and  curtails  the  amounts 
which  would  otherwise  be  expended  in  comforts  for 
the  family  and  in  keeping  up  the  insurance  benefits 
to  draw  on  when  sick  or  out  of  employment.  It  is 
difficult  to  conceive  of  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  doing  a  meaner  or  more  heartless  thing  than 
to  bring  men  who  were  making  an  honest  living  to 
the  conditions  we  have  insufficiently  described,  and 
then  abandon  them  to  start  life  again.  After  formu- 
lating their  gievances,  if  the  organizer  had  honestly 
laid  before  the  members  not  only  the  possibility,  but 
the  probability  of  their  losing  the  strike,  if  he  had 
truthfully  laid  before  them  the  exact  amount  each 
would  receive  from  the  defense  fund,  and  just  how 
long  it  would  hold  out,  and  the  probability  of  the 
severe  hardships  they  and  their  families  would  be 
obliged  to  endure,  and  advised  them  to  take  a  secret 
ballot,  they  would  likely  have  hesitated  in  voting  to 


154  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

strike.  A  man  who  could  advise  men  to  go  on  strike 
under  the  conditions  stated,  without  any  effort  of 
protecting  them  against  loss,  is  without  sympathy 
and  a  sense  of  justice,  and  is  the  kind  of  man  who 
would  persecute  his  neighbor  and  prevent  him  from 
securing  employment  because  he  believes  in  depend- 
ing on  his  own  independence,  energy  and  initiative. 
Looking  over  the  principles  and  policies  and  the 
general  working  of  uinonism,  the  independent 
worker  finds  nothing  in  it  inviting,  nothing  that 
should  induce  a  free  man  to  surrender  his  independ- 
ence and  freedom  for  a  form  of  slavery  in  some  re- 
spects as  debasing  as  negro  slavery. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  UNIONS  DESTRUCTIVE  OF  SOCIAL 
ORDER. 

In  these  enlightened  and  altruistic  times  we  read 
with  amazement  that,  leaders  in  the  church  a  few 
centuries  ago,  devout,  religious  men,  counselled  their 
followers  to  not  keep  faith  with  those  of  different 
religious  belief.  No  matter  how  strong  the  obliga- 
tion might  be  for  one  man  to  discharge  a  given  con- 
tract or  agreement,  and  no  matter  how  solemn  the 
promise  that  he  would  discharge  that  contract  or 
agreement,  he  was  commended  and  justified  by  the 
keeper  of  his  conscience  in  not  keeping  it  if  the  other 
man  differed  with  him  in  religion,  and  did  not  indorse 
the  dominant  religion  of  the  country. 

It  will  perhaps  be  difficult  for  many  good,  intelli- 
gent people  to  believe  that  here  in  the  full  light  of 
the  Twentieth  Century,  those  who  control  and  direct 
the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions,  are  teaching 
this  same  doctrine  of  the  Dark  and  Mediaeval  Ages, 
of  not  keeping  faith  with  those  outside  the  ranks  of 
the  organization.  Let  those  who  would  be  further 
informed  on  the  subject,  read  the  testimony  of  strik- 
ing employees  before  the  Anthracite  Coal  Strike  Com- 
mission of  1902,  which  had  for  its  purpose  an  investi- 
gation of  the  causes  which  led  to  the  strike  and  the 

155 


156  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

conditions  that  existed  in  that  region  prior  to  and 
during  the  strike.  In  the  report  of  that  commission 
it  is  shown  by  the  testimony  of  many  witnesses  that 
organizers  from  the  west  went  among  the  miners  and 
persuaded  them  to  strike  and  attack  the  prosperity 
of  a  company  against  whom  they  had  no  grievance ; 
a  company  that  had  established  an  employees  insur- 
ance fund,  and  had  been  generous  with  its  employees 
in  many  other  ways.  This  action  of  those  who  con- 
trolled and  directed  the  principles  and  policies  of 
the  unions  of  the  Anthracite  Coal  regions,  is  typical 
of  the  action  of  the  unions  in  general  in  this  country, 
in  regard  to  keeping  faith  with  employers  and  those 
opposed  to  their  oppressive  and  tyrannical  methods. 
An  organization  that  is  constantly  striving  to  keep 
up  a  spirit  of  persecution  against  those  who  refuse 
to  surrender  their  industrial  freedom  and  join  it; 
that  refuses  to  be  bound  by  solemn  agreements,  agree- 
ments of  its  own  seeking,  entered  into  with  em- 
ployers, and  refuses  to  keep  faith  with  and  denies 
equal  rights  to  industrial  freedom  to  those  outside  its 
ranks,  is  a  constant  menace  to  social  order  and  indus- 
trial peace.  We  are  liable  to  deceive  ourselves  with 
the  thought  that  we  are  fortunate  in  not  living  in  an 
age  of  almost  universal  ignorance,  or  in  the  tempest- 
uous times  of  religious  persecution  when  the  cruelties 
of  the  Inquisition  were  practiced.  We  have  only  to 
look  around  us  to  see  that  we  have  in  those  who  con- 
trol and  direct  the  principles  and  policies  of  the 
unions,  an  element  of  cruelty  and  persecution  whose 
acts  are  as  fierce  and  unsympathetic  as  were  the  acts 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  157 

of  the  leaders  of  religious  persecution  of  the  Dark 
Ages.  An  organization  that  in  order  to  enforce  its 
unjust  and  unlawful  demands  that  freemen  surren- 
der their  industrial  and  commercial  freedom,  under- 
takes to  bring  into  operation  its  rack  and  thumb- 
screw of  the  boycott  to  starve  women  and  children 
because  their  husbands  and  fathers  refuse  to  sell 
themselves  as  slaves  and  join  it,  cannot  possibly  be 
considered  by  thoughtful,  intelligent,  level-headed 
men  in  any  other  light  than  an  evil,  and  as  destruc- 
tive of  social  order.  Those  who  control  and  direct 
the  principles  and  policies  of  this  organization,  have 
used  it  in  times  of  strikes  to  intimidate  and  overawe 
communities,  and  by  invoking  the  boycott,  they  have 
driven  the  daughters  of  Civil  War  soldiers  and  inde- 
pendent workers  from  employment  as  teachers  in  the 
public  schools  and  in  factories.  They  have  prevented 
physicians  from  attending  the  sick,  and  interfered 
with  the  burial  of  the  dead  of  those  against  whom 
their  poisonous  influences  were  directed.  They  have 
frequently  brought  about  conditions  in  communities 
that  deprived  many  families  of  the  opportunity  of 
obtaining  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  compelled 
fathers  who  were  willing  and  anxious  to  work,  to 
see  their  little  ones  suffer  from  hunger  because  no 
one  dared  to  sell  them  food.  They  have  been  part- 
ners with  their  thugs  and  sluggers  in  the  commission 
of  atrocious  crimes  and  cruelties  against  innocent 
men,  women  and  children,  which  have  rarely  been 
exceeded  by  the  acts  of  savages  the  lowest  in  the 
scale  of  human  intelligence.  This  survival  of  the 


158  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

savage,  primitive,  unsympathetic  instinct  in  so  con- 
siderable a  class  of  our  people,  shows  that  we  have 
not  made  as  much  progress  towards  higher  ethical 
standards  as  could  be  desired.  It  shows  too,  that 
there  is  plenty  of  work  for  those  who  wish  to  enlist 
in  the  army  of  rational  altruism  for  the  purpose  of 
lifting  up  all  classes  to  that  higher  ethical  standard 
which  demands  that  the  liberty  of  each  shall  be  lim- 
ited only  by  the  like  liberty  of  all;  which  demands 
that  no  man  shall  ask  more  rights  or  privileges  than 
he  is  willing  to  concede  to  all  others,  and  which  de- 
mands that  all  shall  respect  each  others  equal  rights. 
All  fair-minded  people  will  agree  that  more  effective 
restraining  influences  should  be  applied  to  checking 
the  savage,  lawless  instinct  of  unionism,  as  it  is  now 
controlled  and  directed  by  the  masters  until  it  can 
be  impressed  with  higher  ethical  ideas  and  shows 
signs  of  possessing  a  sense  of  justice  and  right.  This 
survival  of  the  savage  instinct,  that  revels  in  the 
bloody  persecution  of  those  opposed  to  it,  and  in  the 
destruction  and  waste  of  property  and  social  dis- 
order, and  takes  no  account  of  justice  and  right, 
must  every  where  be  met  by  firmness  and  decision 
and  made  to  feel  that  it  should  give  up  its  teachings 
of  hate,  and  strive  for  the  prize  of  good  will  and  com- 
mon fellowship  among  men. 

There  is  not  a  single  feature  of  the  unions,  as  now 
controlled  and  directed  by  the  masters,  that  tends 
to  social  stability  and  mutual  confidence  and  respect 
of  men  for  each  others  equal  rights  to  industrial  and 
commercial  freedom,  without  which  there  can  be  no 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  159 

progress  and  no  satisfactory  relations  between  men 
in  the  ever  increasing  sociological  division  of  labor. 
No  pirate  captain  ever  sailed  the  seas  under  colors 
more  false  than  those  who  control  and  direct  the 
principles  and  policies  of  the  unions  and  carry  on 
their  war  of  selfishness,  greed  and  hate,  under  the 
flag  of  union  labor.  In  a  few  years  the  masters  have 
caused  greater  losses  and  more  suffering  to  the  people 
of  this  country,  than  all  the  losses  to  commerce  by 
pirates  who  sailed  the  seas  from  ancient  times,  down 
to  the  last  captain  and  his  crew  who  carried  at  the 
mast  head  of  their  ship  the  black  flag  with  skull  and 
crossbones.  There  are  hundreds  of  communities  in 
which  the  people  had  lived  in  peace  and  mutual  re- 
spect for  each  other  until  the  union  organizer  came 
along  and  organized  a  union  out  of  the  weak-minded, 
violent,  discontented  and  vicious  elements,  and  ord- 
ered them  out  on  a  strike  with  instructions  to  intimi- 
date and  assault  all  who  showed  a  disposition  to 
take  their  places.  As  soon  as  the  poison  with  which 
their  feeble  and  vicious  minds  had  been  infected, 
began  to  take  effect,  they  were  ready  to  present  de- 
mands on  their  employer  with  which  he  could  not 
comply  without  feeling  that  he  was  submitting  to  a 
disagreeable  form  of  slavery.  On  his  refusal  to  com- 
ply with  the  demands  made  on  him,  the  organizer 
has  called  the  men  out  on  strike  and  ordered  them 
to  picket  the  plant  or  place  of  business  of  the  offend- 
ing employer;  to  intercept  all  independent  workers 
who  seek  employment  to  fill  the  places  of  the  strikers, 
and  to  warn  them  at  the  peril  of  their  lives  to  keep 


160  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

away.  All  independent  workers  who  may  have  taken 
the  places  of  the  strikers,  and  do  not  promise  when 
intercepted  by  the  pickets,  to  not  return  to  work, 
are  assaulted  and  beaten  or  murdered.  If  the  em- 
ployer holds  out,  lawlessness  and  violence  increase 
until  there  is  almost  complete  suspension  of  business 
in  the  community,  for  the  manager  of  the  strike 
hopes  to  bring  about  such  intolerable  conditions  that 
the  public  will  intervene  to  force  the  employer  to 
yield.  If  the  public  will  not  undertake  to  coerce  the 
employer  to  yield  at  the  suggestions  of  the  strike 
manager,  then  after  some  meetings  of  the  committee 
of  the  striking  employees  with  the  organizer,  the 
strikers  and  hired  thugs  of  the  union  try  to  dynamite 
or  destroy  the  employer's  property.  This  reign  of 
terror  inaugurated  by  the  strike  manager,  may  last 
from  a  few  weeks  to  a  year,  during  which  time  nearly 
all  peaceable,  law-abiding,  property-owning  citizens 
feel  insecure  in  their  persons  and  property. 

It  would  perhaps  in  nearly  every  instance  be 
cheaper  to  the  community  and  to  the  employer  if, 
the  very  moment  the  organizer  infected  his  employes 
with  disloyalty  to  his  interests,  and  got  them  to  join 
the  union  and  ready  to  make  their  demands,  he  would 
close  down  his  business  indefinitely.  This  method 
has  worked  admirably  in  many  instances,  and  saved 
employers  and  communities  much  trouble  and  loss 
and  brought  home  to  some  employees  a  sense  of  their 
folly  in  surrendering  their  industrial  freedom  and 
giving  their  allegiance  to  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery,  who  are  interested  in  keeping  them  de- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  161 

pendent.  Here  is  an  illustration  out  of  many  cases 
in  which  the  employer  beat  the  tyrants  of  the  unions 
in  their  game  of  hold  up.  A  manufacturer  of  stoves 
employing  thirty  or  forty  men,  had  been  doing  a 
good  business  for  several  years,  and  his  employees 
were  well  paid,  happy  and  contented,  and  some  had 
paid  and  others  were  paying  for  their  homes.  They 
were  fairly  treated,  satisfied  with  their  wages,  and 
had  no  complaint  to  make  against  their  employer. 
An  organizer  of  the  national  federation  came  along 
and  had  a  long  tale  of  woe  of  the  wrongs  of  laboring 
men,  talked  to  the  employees  about  grinding  toil, 
sweat  shops  and  scab  labor  and  organized  them  into 
a  union  before  the  employer  knew  what  was  being 
done.  When  the  organizer  got  all  the  men  into  the 
union  and  bound  as  securely  as  slaves  were  ever 
bound  by  African  chiefs  who  sold  their  people,  he 
went  to  the  employer  and  told  what  he  had  done,  and 
that  he  now  had  some  demands  to  make  upon  him  in 
regard  to  regulating  the  scale  of  wages,  the  hours  of 
labor,  the  number  apprentices  allowed,  and  the  priv- 
ilege of  the  union  officials  to  inspect  his  books.  The 
employer  listened  patiently  and  told  him  to  state 
fully  his  demands  and  he  would  give  them  careful 
consideration.  In  addition  to  regulating  the  scale 
of  wages,  the  hours  of  labor,  and  the  number  of  ap- 
prentices allowed,  the  organizer  with  an  air  of 
authority  told  the  employer  that  he  would  be  re- 
quired to  show  him  his  books  and  lay  open  to  him 
his  business.  As  the  employer  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  running  his  business  in  accordance  with  his  own 


162  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

views  to  make  it  successful,  he  naturally  demurred 
to  the  proposition  of  having  his  affairs  supervised 
by  an  ignorant,  irresponsible  alien  and  outsider,  and 
told  the  organizer  that  he  would  require  some  time 
to  think  the  matter  over,  and  asked  the  consequences 
if  he  could  not  see  his  way  clear  to  comply  with  the 
demands  made  upon  him.  With  an  air  of  authority 
and  importance  the  organizer  replied  that  he  could 
not  wait  long  for  an  answer,  and  that  on  refusal  to 
comply  with  his  demands,  he  would  immediately  call 
the  men  out  on  strike.  Having  the  spirit  of  free 
manhood  in  him,  the  employer  replied  all  right,  that 
he  was  not  obliged  to  keep  his  business  running; 
that  it  was  a  dull  season  of  the  year  when  his  bus- 
iness was  slack;  that  considerable  repairs  to  his 
plant  were  necessary  any  way,  and  that  he  then  and 
there  declared  his  plant  closed  down  indefinitely. 
Of  course  the  organizer  was  greatly  chagrined  for 
having  thrown  all  the  men  out  of  their  jobs,  and 
his  usefulness  to  the  cause  in  making  slaves  in  that 
locality  was  at  an  end  for  awhile.  A  few  months 
afterwards  the  employer  reopened  his  plant  and 
took  back  singly  only  men  in  whom  he  had  confi- 
dence, and  men  whom  he  believed  would  be  loyal  to 
his  interests,  should  they  again  be  approached  by 
an  organizer  to  induce  them  to  sell  themselves.  This 
is  one  out  of  the  thousands  of  ways  in  which  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  annoy,  hamper,  and 
attempt  to  take  charge  of  the  business  of  hard  work- 
ing men  until  the  slavery  has  become  such  an  intol- 
erable oppression  that  most  intelligent  people  would 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  163 

like  to  see  its  power  destroyed.  If  some  plan  could 
be  devised  for  keeping  the  hands  of  the  masters  out 
of  the  pockets  of  the  poor,  simple-minded  members 
of  the  unions  and  robbing  them  of  their  wages,  it 
would  be  millions  of  dollars  every  year  to  these  peo- 
ple who  need  ail  their  wages  for  the  support  of 
their  families,  besides  it  would  lessen  the  losses  to 
the  public  many  millions  of  dollars  annually.  It 
would  also  make  it  impossible  for  the  masters  of 
the  union  slavery  to  work  up  so  much  social  dis- 
order, treason,  violence  and  bloodshed,  in  their 
schemes  to  force  the  public  to  pay  tribute  to  their 
desperate  piracy.  There  is  beginning  to  be  an  awak- 
ening of  the  public  conscience  to  the  insolent  and 
insufferable  conduct  of  the  masters  in  their  frequent 
attacks  on  the  prosperity  of  communities  and  indi- 
viduals, and  in  bringing  about  almost  daily  in  some 
community,  a  condition  of  anarchy,  violence  and  loss 
of  life,  frequently  appaling  losses  of  life  by  the 
wrecking  of  passenger  trains  and  street  cars,  and 
the  blowing  up  with  dynamite  of  railroad  stations, 
and  bridges  and  the  homes  of  citizens  who  have  in- 
curred the  curse  of  the  unions. 

It  has  long  been  known  to  those  who  have  studied 
questions  of  economics  that  slave  labor  is  not  as 
efficient  or  productive  and  profitable  to  an  em- 
ployer, as  intelligent  free  labor,  and  business  men 
and  manufacturers  are  coming  gradually  to  note  the 
fact  that  the  labor  of  the  union  slaves  on  account  of 
their  policy  of  making  work,  slovenly,  slouchy  work, 
the  waste  and  the  indifference  and  disloyalty  to  the 


164  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

interests  of  employers,  is  becoming  less  efficient  and 
productive  and  less  profitable,  as  compared  with  the 
work  of  free  and  independent  workers  who  depend 
upon  their  efficiency  and  loyalty  to  the  interests  of 
their  employers  to  hold  them  to  their  jobs,  and  to 
commend  them  for  promotion.  It  is  an  old  saying 
and  a  true  one  that  no  man  can  loyally  serve  two 
masters.  In  the  very  nature  of  things  it  is  impos- 
sible that  men  whose  first  allegiance  is  to  their 
union,  and  whose  teachings  by  their  masters  lead 
them  to  regard  their  employer  as  an  enemy  whose 
rights  they  are  not  bound  to  respect,  should  serve 
him  as  faithfully  and  efficiently,  as  free,  independent 
men  who  regard  him  as  their  friend  and  willing  to 
reward  them  according  to  their  merit.  The  policy 
of  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  to  create  distrust 
between  employer  and  employee,  or  that  would  have 
an  employee  regard  his  employer  as  an  enemy,  is  cer- 
tainly destructive  of  social  order  and  stability.  It  is 
destructive  of  social  order  and  stability  for  the  mas- 
ters of  the  union  slavery  to  send  out  their  hired  thugs 
and  sluggers,  to  assault,  knock  down  and  pour  car- 
bolic acid  in  the  mouth  of  an  independent  worker, 
as  was  done  in  Chicago,  and  assault,  knock  down, 
kick  and  beat  and  gouge  out  an  eye  of  an  independ- 
ent worker  and  leave  it  hanging  on  his  cheek,  as 
was  done  at  another  time,  and  to  cause  a  death  and 
injury  list  of  thousands  of  men,  women  and  children 
in  a  few  years.  Such  conduct  of  organized  labor  is 
destructive  of  social  order  and  stability. 

There  is  here  a  field  for  missionary  work  of  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  165 

most  pressing  need,  which  should  engage  the  atten- 
tion of  all  religious  teachers  and  professors  in  col- 
leges and  universities,  and  all  men  of  altruistic  in- 
clinations, who  would  like  to  see  developed  in  our 
people  a  broader  fellowship  and  sympathy,  a  fellow- 
ship and  sympathy  that  would  lift  up  and  help  along 
with  words  of  kindness  and  encouragement,  a  stumb- 
ling brother,  instead  of  giving  him  a  push  and  a  kick 
and  an  oath  through  grinding  teeth,  as  is  now  too 
much  the  fashion.  We  should  like  to  see  some  of 
the  millions  of  dollars,  and  some  of  the  vast  amount 
of  energy  annually  expended  in  converting  the  hea- 
then, diverted  to  home  use  and  expended  in  teach- 
ing sympathy,  charity,  love  and  a  broader  fellowship 
among  some  millions  of  our  own  people  who  are  daily 
fed  on  thoughts  of  prejudice  and  hatred  of  fellow- 
men  and  of  the  Government  and  flag  that  protects 
them  by  ten  thousand  organizers  and  officials  of  the 
unions. 

All  things  are  growing  or  decaying,  accumulating 
matter,  or  dissipating  it,  integrating  or  disintegrat- 
ing, gaining  motion  or  losing  motion,  tending  to  com- 
plete concentration  or  complete  diffusion.  Every 
mass  of  matter  from  a  pebble  on  the  shore  to  a 
planet  or  sun,  is  radiating  heat  to  other  masses,  and 
receiving  and  absorbing  heat  from  other  masses. 
Pursuing  this  line  of  thought  we  must  admit  that 
unionism  is  tending  to  strengthen  the  ties  that  bind 
our  people  together  in  common  fellowship  and  inter- 
ests, or  tending  to  dissolve  those  ties.  The  common 
man  who  runs  may  read  that  the  tendency  of  union- 


166  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ism  is  to  dissolve  the  ties  that  bind  our  people  to- 
gether in  common  fellowship  and  interests,  and  to 
set  them  at  each  others'  throats  in  the  most  primi- 
tive fashion.  When  we  say  that  every  aggregate  is 
contracting  or  expanding,  integrating  or  disintegrat- 
ing, we  mean  that  it  is  receiving  more  heat  or 
motion  than  it  is  radiating,  or  radiating  more  heat 
than  it  is  receiving.  So  we  say  that  while  unionism 
is  a  force  that  constantly  tends  to  dissolve  the  ties 
that  bind  our  people  together  in  common  fellowship 
and  interests,  to  undo  what  civilization  has  done, 
there  are  other  forces  in  operation  in  the  social 
aggregate  which  we  may  call  rational  altruism, 
which  tends  to  bind  men  together  in  common  fellow- 
ship and  interests,  tends  to  neutralize  the  antagonis- 
tic and  disintegrating  forces  of  unionism.  Should 
unionism  become  more  potential  than  rational  altru- 
ism in  our  social  aggregate,  or  the  social  aggregate 
radiate  more  heat  than  it  receives,  it  would  grad- 
ually become  cold  and  lifeless  as  the  moon  or  other 
masses  that  have  radiated  their  heat.  On  the  other 
hand  should  the  social  aggregate  receive  more  heat 
than  it  radiates,  it  would  gradually  end  in  disinte- 
gration or  diffiusion;  the  motion  or  life  of  the  mass 
would  be  converted  into  motion  of  the  molecules,  or 
social  units;  as  the  corporate  life  ceased,  there 
would  be  only  individual  life,  and  as  corporate  re- 
straint ceased,  every  man's  hand  would  be  raised 
against  every  other  man  as  in  a  state  of  nature. 


CHAPTER  XII. 
THE   UNIONS   A   DISLOYAL    ORGANIZATION. 

This  statement  will  find  ample  verification  in  the 
acts  of  the  unions,  and  not  so  much  by  anything 
found  in  their  constitution  and  by-laws.  The  pro- 
fessions of  innocence  and  declared  purposes  and 
aims  of  the  federated  unions  "  to  be  to  render  em- 
ployment and  the  means  of  subsistence  less  precari- 
ous by  securing  to  workers  an  equitable  share  of 
the  fruits  of  labor,"  are  all  simply  platitudes  and 
high-sounding  phrases  without  meaning  and  in- 
tended to  deceive  the  unsuspecting  and  uncritical,  for 
the  leaders  know  that  the  laws  of  the  country  guar- 
antee to  every  man  equal  rights  to  life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness,  without  needing  any  sup- 
plementary dicta  of  unionism.  The  declared  pur- 
poses and  aims  of  unionism  as  quoted,  are  false  and 
misleading,  for  everybody  who  knows  anything 
about  the  organization,  knows  that  its  purposes  and 
aims  are  not  to  "  secure  to  the  workers  an  equitable 
share  of  the  fruits  of  labor/*  but  to  secure  to  a  frac- 
tion and  faction  of  labor,  a  fraction  of  about  one- 
tenth  of  labor,  called  organized  labor,  a  monopoly 
of  labor,  leaving  nine-tenths  of  labor,  free  independ- 
ent labor,  unprovided  for.  Stripped  of  its  preten- 
sions, this  labor  trust  organization  is  as  preda- 

167 


168  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

tory  as  a  band  of  Apaches  and  endeavors  to  seize 
everything  in  sight  by  disregarding  the  rights  of 
all  others  to  industrial  and  commercial  freedom. 
While  the  laws  of  the  States  and  the  Nation  are  based 
on  the  conception  of  equal  rights  and  justice  to  all, 
those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  unions,  undertake  to  come  in  and 
over-ride  these  laws  by  force,  organized  force,  intimi- 
dation, assaults,  murders,  assassinations,  and  deter- 
mine who  shall  work  and  who  shall  not,  who  shall 
carry  on  his  business  as  he  sees  fit  without  trespass- 
ing on  the  equal  rights  of  others,  and  who  shall  not. 
In  fact  the  proponents  of  unionism  propose  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  will  of  all  the  people  as  embodied  in 
the  laws,  their  own  will  and  their  tyrannical  and 
autocratic  authority.  They  have  had  the  shameless 
audacity  to  intimate  that  because  communities  that 
were  terrorized  and  intimidated  by  the  thugs  and 
sluggers  of  the  unions  did  not  organize  vigilance 
committees  to  resist  union  aggressions  and  outlawry, 
they  were  in  sympathy  with  them.  When  the  pro- 
ponents of  the  unions  have  set  up  a  reign  of  terror 
and  violence  in  a  community,  and  the  people  have 
appealed  to  the  constituted  authorities  for  protec- 
tion, and  when  a  force  of  sufficient  strength  has  been 
sent  to  the  locality  to  check  the  unlawful  aggressions 
complained  of,  the  masters  have  protested  and 
howled  declaring  that  the  protecting  force  was  not 
necessary,  and  demanding  its  withdrawal.  An  or- 
ganization that  is  constantly  striving  by  force  and 
fraud  to  substitute  its  will  and  authority  for  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  169 

authority  of  the  peoples '  government,  is  unquestion- 
ably committing  treason,  and  treason  of  the  most 
odious  kind.  In  this  country  treason  is  defined  as 
levying  actual  war  against  the  government,  or  ad- 
hering to  its  enemies  and  giving  them  aid  and  com- 
fort.* An  organization  that  kills  loyal  citizens  with- 
out any  form  of  trial  because  they  are  loyal  to  their 
government,  and  because  they  refuse  to  comply  with 
the  unlawful  demands  of  that  organization,  is  a  trea- 
sonable organization.  There  is  very  little  difference 
between  making  and  levying  war.  It  is  just  as  in- 
jurious to  the  man  who  pays  the  government  for 
protection,  to  be  deprived  of  his  equal  rights  to  life, 
liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  by  an  internal 


*NOTE.  In  support  of  the  contention  that  the  union  is  dis- 
loyal organization,  I  quote  from  the  decision  of  Justice  Wright  in  the 
Buck's  Stove  and  Range  contempt  case: — 

"  There  is  a  studied,  determined,  defiant  conflict  precipitated  in 
the  light  of  open  day,  between  the  decrees  of  a  tribunal  ordained  by 
the  government  of  the  Federal  Union  and  of  the  tribunals  of  another 
federation,  grown  up  in  the  land;  one  or  the  other  must  succumb." 

As  showing  that  the  members  of  the  unions  are  taught  by  the 
leaders  disloyalty  to  the  Government,  or  that  the  authority  of  the 
unions  is  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  General  Government, 
I  quote  from  the  Square  Deal  Magazine  for  May  1909,  p.  69,  in  the 
application  of  William  Brooks  of  Westville,  Illinois,  a  member  of  the 
Miners'  Union,  for  naturalization  papers  in  the  United  States  Circuit 
Court  before  Justice  Wright.  Judge  Wright  asked  Mr.  Brooks  the 
question : 

"  If  it  came  to  a  point  where  the  union  and  the  law  should  differ, 
an  emergency  which  I  don't  apprehend  will  ever  come  to  you,  which 
would  you  follow,  the  union  or  the  law?" 

"  The  union,"  answered  the  applicant  with   apparent  feeling. 

The  Judge  said,  "  You,  perhaps  don't  understand  the  question. 
If  the  union  should  say  that  one  thing  was  right  and  the  laws  of  the 
United  States  should  say  it  was  not,  which  would  you  follow,  the 
union  or  the  law  of  the  land?" 

"  The  union,"  reiterated  the  applicant. 


170  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

as  by  an  external  enemy.  While  we  believe  that 
many  of  the  rank  and  file  of  labor  organizations 
are  at  heart  loyal  to  the  government,  we  are  satisfied 
that  the  leaders  are  the  rankest  kind  of  traitors ;  for 
who  is  there  that  believes  that  in  the  decision  of  a 
question  between  their  organization  and  the  govern- 
ment, that  they  would  elect  to  stand  by  the  govern- 
ment? Indeed  their  conduct  and  expressions  on 
many  occasions  have  been  of  such  a  character  as  to 
justify  all  good  citizens  in  regarding  them  as  trai- 
tors to  our  country.  Their  public  writings  and  their 
harangues  to  their  followers,  inciting  them  to  riot 
and  bloodshed  and  in  attacking,  assaulting  and  mur- 
dering independent  workers;  to  the  destruction  of 
property,  and  the  persecution  of  families,  and  their 
total  want  of  respect  or  regard  for  the  equal  rights 
of  others,  are  scarcely  less  excusable  than  open  trea- 
son. It  is  painful  to  speak  thus  of  men  whom  we 
should  like  to  think  of  as  simply  over-zealous  and 
enthusiastic  for  the  sacred  cause  of  labor,  of  which 
no  man  or  set  of  men  should  have  a  monopoly,  but 
which  should  be  as  free  for  all  as  air  or  light,  instead 
of  being  held  as  a  monoply  by  a  set  of  men  who 
never  strike  or  never  sweat  as  a  means  of  exacting 
tribute  from  those  who  do  work,  by  making  them 
pay  heavy  fees  for  permission  to  work  and  to  give 
a  lien  on  their  wages  while  permitted  to  work.  One 
who  accepts  and  conforms  his  conduct  to  the  laws 
of  the  State  until  they  are  repealed  or  modified  in  a 
regular  prescribed  way,  we  consider  a  loyal  citizen, 
but  if  he  conspires  with  others  to  nullify  and  set  at 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  171 

defiance  these  laws  by  doing  violence  to  those  whom 
the  laws  were  made  to  protect,  he  certainly  can  not 
be  considered  loyal  to  the  State,  and  if  he  is  not 
loyal,  he  must  be  disloyal. 

In  the  federated  unions  we  have  a  sort  of  govern- 
ment within  the  general  government,  with  its  execu- 
tive head  and  executive  departments  and  expensive 
staffs  located  at  the  capitol  of  the  country,  not  for 
the  purpose  of  strengthening  the  hands  of  the  officers 
of  the  government  in  enforcing  the  laws  made  by 
the  representatives  of  the  people,  but  for  the  purpose 
of  weakening,  over-riding  and  nullifying  those  laws 
when  they  stand  in  the  way  of  the  violent  acts  of 
those  who  control  the  principles  and  policies  of  the 
unions  in  trampling  upon  the  rights  of  those  opposed 
to  them.  The  "  master  of  a  million  minds  "  not  sat- 
isfied with  the  enormous  losses  he  has  caused  to 
nearly  every  business  by  his  guerilla  warfare  against 
the  industrial  prosperity  of  the  country,  and  the 
suffering  and  poverty  he  has  brought  upon  thous- 
ands of  his  own  people,  has  thrown  off  the  masque 
of  hypocrisy  and  declares  that  he  is  going  into  poli- 
tics with  the  view  of  seizing  control  of  the  govern- 
ment in  the  interest  of  the  unions  and  of  downing 
all  opposition  to  making  them  an  excepted  class,  a 
class  of  special  privileges.  Indeed,  in  the  recent 
election,  he  endeavored  to  defeat  the  present  speaker 
of  the  lower  house  of  Congress,  the  second  highest 
office  in  the  government,  and  had  he  been  successful, 
it  would  probably  have  given  him  prestige  sufficient 
to  have  enabled  him  to  have  dictated  a  successful 


172  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

candidate  of  his  own  choice  and  subservient  to  his 
influence. 

From  what  we  consider  ample  testimony,  the 
unions  are  not  only  a  disloyal  organization,  but  they 
are  an  enemy  to  our  government  and  a  menace  to 
our  liberties.  Indeed  the  conduct  and  expressions 
of  the  masters  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions,  are  as  treasonable  as  the 
conduct  of  Benedict  Arnold,  and  if  they  are  daily 
getting  to  be  looked  upon  in  that  light  by  the  great 
loyal  heart  of  the  country,  they  have  only  themselves 
to  blame  for  it.  We  never  hear  from  the  lips  of 
these  traitors  any  warm  expressions  of  reverence 
and  respect  for  our  flag,  the  symbol  of  liberty  and 
equal  rights  among  men  every  where,  but  on  the  con- 
trary they  are  in  the  habit  of  characterizing  it  as  a 
rag,  having  no  important  significance,  and  of  sub- 
stituting in  its  place  in  halls  of  discussion  and  in 
processions,  the  red  flag  of  anarchy  and  socialism. 
We  never  hear  of  the  masters  praising  that  part  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  very  founda- 
tion of  our  Government,  which  states  that  "  we  hold 
these  truths  self-evident,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal  ;*  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with 
certain  unalienable  rights;  that  among  these  are 
Life,  Liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. "  It  is 
disloyal  conduct  for  the  masters  to  send  out  their 

*We  suppose  that  this  expression  "  all  men  are  created  equal," 
was  intended  to  mean  by  the  authors,  that  all  men  are  created  with 
equal  rights  to  justice,  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
The  expression  cannot  be  defended  on  any  other  supposition,  for  no 
two  individuals  are  ever  created  equal  in  any  other  respect. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  173 

thugs,  sluggers,  murderers,  and  assassins  to  terror- 
ize communities  and  set  up  the  authority  of  the 
unions  as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  peoples 
government,  as  they  have  been  doing  almost  daily 
for  years.  It  is  disloyal  conduct  for  the  masters  to 
harangue  the  union  slaves  and  teach  them  to  hate 
our  government,  its  laws,  its  flag,  and  its  courts,  and 
to  instruct  them  to  hate  and  assault,  murder  and 
inhumanly  maim,  the  loyal  citizens  of  our  country, 
and  to  burn  and  destroy  their  property.  It  is  dis- 
loyal conduct  for  the  masters  to  cause  the  discharge 
of  young  men  from  the  unions  because  they  belong 
to  militia  organizations  requiring  an  oath  of  alle- 
giance to  the  State  and  National  Governments,  and 
to  do  all  in  their  power  to  prevent  young  men  of  the 
country  from  joining  the  militia  organizations,  or 
from  enlisting  in  the  army  or  navy.  Indeed  if  the 
masters  ever  draw  a  breath  loyal  to  our  government, 
or  to  the  communities  in  which  they  live,  or  to  any- 
thing except  to  their  own  selfish  interests  and  greed, 
there  is  no  visible  evidence  of  it.  They  are  disloyal 
to  the  interests  of  the  communities  where  they  live, 
for  they  make  war  on  them  and  cripple  or  destroy 
their  business  and  prosperity  to  satisfy  their  own 
insane  vanity  of  importance  and  thirst  for  greed  and 
power.  They  teach  their  white  slaves  to  be  disloyal 
to  the  interests  of  their  employers,  and  not  to  keep 
faith  with  them  when  it  suits  their  convenience, 
using  such  coarse  expressions  as  ' '  To  h — 11  with  con- 
tracts when  the  interests  of  the  unions  are  at  stake,  * ' 
and  to  satisfy  their  own  greed,  they  are  disloyal  to 


174  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

the  interests  of  their  own  slaves  of  the  unions,  for 
they  rob  and  plunder  and  extort  from  them  under 
various  pretexts,  their  wages,  which  they  know  are 
needed  for  the  support  of  the  families  of  the  men 
thus  robbed,  many  of  whom  are  poorly  fed  and 
clothed.  Indeed  they  intercept  the  food  going  to 
the  mouths  of  hungry  children,  which  they  know, 
or  should  know,  rightfully  belongs  to  them  through 
the  efforts  of  their  fathers.  It  is  disloyal  conduct 
for  the  masters  by  threats,  intimidations,  or  by  any 
other  means,  to  interfere  with  the  liberty  of  men  and 
prevent  them  from  fitting  their  sons  for  useful  and 
remunerative  business  or  professions  and  good  use- 
ful citizens,  to  prevent  them  from  drifting  into 
criminal  and  wasted  lives.  It  is  disloyal  conduct  for 
the  officials  of  the  labor  trust  to  wage  continual  war 
on  the  industrial  activities  of  the  country  for  the 
purposes  of  giving  less  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the 
laboring  men  a  monopoly  of  all  the  work,  leaving 
more  than  ninety  per  cent,  unprovided  for.  It  is  dis- 
loyal conduct  for  the  masters  of  the  white  slavery 
to  interfere  in  any  manner  with  the  rights  and  liber- 
ties of  independent  workers,  rights  and  liberties 
guaranteed  to  them  by  our  constitution,  to  work  for 
whom  and  under  such  terms  as  may  please  them, 
without  being  intercepted  by  union  pickets  and 
threatened  and  beaten  and  insulted,  going  to  and  re- 
turning from  work. 

An  organization  that  is  disloyal  to  the  government 
that  gives  it  protection  and  shelter;  that  is  disloyal 
to  the  communities  from  which  it  asks  support;  and 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  175 

disloyal  to  the  interests  of  the  employers  whom  it 
desires  to  give  its  members  employment,  will  cer- 
tainly not  long  find  favor  with  an  intelligent  and 
free  people  who  do  not  ask  more  rights  and  priv- 
ileges than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  all  others. 
An  organization  whose  members  are  regarded  as 
aliens  and  enemies  to  the  best  interests  of  commun- 
ities and  to  the  common  welfare,  and  as  slaves  of 
masters  whose  greed  and  meanness  knows  no  bounds 
of  decency,  must  gradually  bring  upon  itself  a  repu- 
tation so  foul  as  to  make  intelligent  and  decent  peo- 
ple shudder  to  think  of  having  anything  to  do  with 
it.  When  we  see  so  many  of  our  people  engaged  in 
altruistic  works  of  every  kind,  from  the  lessening 
of  the  burdens  and  enforcing  kindlier  treatment  of 
our  domestic  animals  up  to  their  efforts  of  bettering 
the  conditions  of  our  unfortunate  classes  of  every 
kind  and  degree,  and  then  turn  to  the  leaders  of 
organized  labor,  and  look  at  their  work  of  crime  and 
blood  and  the  teaching  of  hatred  for  all  that  the 
rational,  sane  man  regards  as  good,  it  makes  the 
heart  sick;  it  impresses  us  that  the  evolution  of  the 
moral  sentiment,  has  been  very  slow  in  a  considerable 
part  of  our  race.  The  unfortunate  part  of  it  all  is, 
that  the  teachers  of  hate  and  selfishness,  have  by 
false  promises  and  foul  manipulations  secured  con- 
trol of  the  minds  and  bodies  of  many  of  the  unfor- 
tunate classes  and  turned  them  with  evil  intentions 
and  conduct  against  their  benefactors. 

The  men  of  brains  who  have  worked  and  saved  to 
get  a  little  ahead,  are  the  men  who  pay  the  taxes  to 


176  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

provide  for  and  support  the  charitable  institutions, 
for  the  unfortunate,  and  who  support  the  public 
schools  which  educate  the  children  of  the  unfortu- 
nate and  feeble-minded  classes,  and  who  furnish  work 
for  those  classes.  In  the  struggle  for  existence  in  a 
state  of  nature,  the  imperfect  and  unfortunate  mem- 
bers drop  out,  when  the  competition  for  subsistence 
is  severe,  and  only  those  fitted  for  the  conditions 
survive.  And  we  are  approaching  a  time  when  it 
will  be  a  serious  question  as  to  how  the  burden  borne 
by  the  competent  in  caring  for  the  incompetent  and 
in  restraining  the  vicious  and  criminally  inclined, 
may  be  lightened.  The  burden  might  be  greatly 
lightened  by  forcing  the  men  who  never  strike  or 
never  sweat,  to  take  and  keep  their  hands  from  the 
throats  and  pockets  of  the  unfortunate  and  simple- 
minded  classes  which  they  have  brought  into  the 
union  slavery,  and  allow  them  to  enjoy  the  wages  of 
their  toil.  We  know  how  to  improve  the  breeds  of 
our  domestic  animals  and  plants ;  we  do  not  allow 
the  scrubs  and  worthless  to  multiply  and  perpetuate 
their  kind,  and  we  hope  by  a  similar  process  of 
weeding  out  the  imperfect,  to  improve  our  race,  that 
is,  by  preventing  men  and  women  of  certain  mental 
or  physical  imperfections  from  multiplying.  This 
process  of  weeding  out  the  imperfect  and  undesir- 
ables which  has  no  cruel  features  in  it,  would  effect- 
ually eliminate  the  anarchist,  the  walking  delegate, 
the  organizer,  and  the  wild-eyed  socialist,  in  one  or 
two  generations.  There  are  now  thousands  of  men 
and  women  who  are  conscious  of  their  imperfections, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  177 

who  have  sense  and  interest  enough  in  the  common 
welfare,  not  to  wish  to  transmit  and  perpetuate  tliem. 
When  we  see  men  like  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  who  show  no  more  interest  in  the  common 
welfare  than  the  bandit  or  alien  and  consider  the 
classes  from  which  they  draw  recruits  for  their 
league  of  hate  and  selfishness,  we  are  impressed  that 
their  power  for  mischief  is  very  great,  and  that  the 
evil  should  be  treated  by  scientific  methods.  Indeed, 
their  conduct  in  general  is  that  of  aliens  or  disloyal 
men  who  feel  no  interest  in  common  with  the  com- 
munity, and  who  do  not  feel  distress  as  all  loyal 
citizens  when  business  is  paralyzed  by  a  strike  and 
the  demons  of  hate,  murder  and  destruction  are 
turned  loose  by  the  teachers  of  envy,  hate  and  self- 
ishness, to  do  their  fiendish  and  bloody  work,  in 
the  name  of  union  labor. 

These  aliens  and  traitors  of  our  country  are  loud 
in  their  denunciations  of  the  courts  for  issuing  re- 
straining orders  to  prevent  them  and  their  fellow 
thugs  and  sluggers  from  committing  crimes  against 
persons  and  property,  ignoring  the  fact  patent  to 
every  man  of  common  sense,  that  the  injunctions  or 
restraining  orders  would  not  apply  to  them  if  they 
had  no  intention  of  committing  the  crimes  com- 
plained of.  The  courts  never  issue  a  writ  of  injunc- 
tion or  a  restraining  order  to  prevent  men  from  com- 
mitting crime  except  on  the  complaint  of  some  rep- 
utable person  that  he  has  reason  to  believe  that  the 
parties  named  in  the  complaint,  are  about  to  com- 
mit a  crime,  a  crime  too  for  which  adequate  com- 


178  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

pensation  could  not  be  made.  It  is  not  likely  that 
a  reputable  business  man  would  make  complaint 
against  innocent  men  who  had  always  led  blameless 
lives  and  were  in  no  way  connected  with  a  criminal 
organization,  that  they  were  about  to  commit  a  crime 
on  persons  or  property,  and  should  be  restrained.  A 
loyal,  honest,  law-abiding  man  who  has  no  intention 
of  crime  in  his  heart  will  find  no  ground  for  com- 
plaint against  these  injunctive  orders  of  the  courts. 
Indeed  the  very  fact  of  opposition  to  such  injuc- 
tive  orders  is  a  confession  of  guilty  intention.  And 
when  the  masters  order  their  union  slaves  to  ignore 
the  injunctive  orders  of  the  courts,  they  are  com- 
mitting treason  as  much  as  by  firing  upon  the  flag, 
a  form  of  treason  too,  which  must  be  firmly  met  or 
representative  government  must  end  in  shame.  Any 
concessions  made  by  the  friends  of  law  and  order 
and  of  equal  rights,  to  the  masters  of  the  union  slav- 
ery, who  are  constant^  demanding  that  the  mem- 
bers of  labor  organizations  shall  have  special  priv- 
ileges to  trespass  upon  and  ignore  the  rights  of  all 
citizens  outside  the  unions,  are  certain  to  be  regarded 
as  due  to  weakness  and  fear,  and  to  be  followed  by 
demands  for  further  concessions  until  every  freeman 
yields  up  his  freedom.  Any  demands  made  by  the 
masters  on  legislative  bodies,  municipal,  state  or  na- 
tional, should  be  resisted  on  the  general  principle 
that  the  demands  are  made  by  the  representatives 
of  a  disloyal  organization,  and  that  the  concession 
demanded  can  not  be  shown  to  be  in  the  interest  of 
all  the  people. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  PESSIMISM  OF  THE  UNIONS. 

A  pessimist  is  a  person  who  looks  at  the  dark  side 
and  takes  a  gloomy  view  of  everything  and  sees  no 
good  in  anything;  who  regards  life  more  of  a  curse 
than  a  blessing;  who  doubts  whether  life  is  worth 
living;  who  never  takes  a  cheerful  view  of  anything 
and  who  never  laughs  or  smiles;  who  never  looks 
for  a  betterment  of  social  conditions,  but  of  their 
continually  growing  worse ;  who  magnifies  a  molehill 
of  evil  into  a  mountain  of  evil ;  who  never  makes  an 
introspective  examination  of  himself  to  lay  bare  the 
evils  of  his  own  conduct;  who  never  has  a  word  of 
praise  or  encouragement  for  any  one ;  who  never  has 
an  ideal  of  any  kind  worth  striving  for;  one  whose 
digestion  is  bad  and  who  is  at  outs  with  himself  and 
all  the  world ;  one  who  sees  no  good  in  altruistic  acts 
with  the  view  of  improving  the  race  and  securing 
for  it  increase  of  happiness,  and  who  sees  in  the  altru- 
istic acts  of  others,  an  ulterior  purpose  of  selfishness. 

Now  those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions,  seem  to  possess  these  con- 
ceptions of  the  pessimist  in  almost  every  particular. 
While  most  intelligent  civilized  men  regard  idleness 
as  an  evil  and  demoralizing  to  the  individual,  and 
work  as  pleasant  and  beneficial  to  him,  the  repre- 

179 


180  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

sentatives  of  the  unions  are  constantly  talking  about 
"  grinding  toil  and  sweat  shops,"  as  if  it  was  an  evil 
and  kind  of  horrible  slavery  to  which  their  members 
are  consigned  by  some  kind  of  evil  genius;  some 
Sisyphus  who  keeps  them  rolling  the  stone  to  the  top 
of  the  hill  to  roll  it  back  upon  them  again  to  renew 
the  never  ending  task.  It  takes  a  clever  mind  to 
detect  the  trick  of  the  prestidigitator,  even  when  we 
know  that  his  performance  is  a  trick;  but  it  per- 
haps takes  equally  as  bright  a  mind  to  detect  the 
trick  of  the  labor  agitator  who  takes  the  feeble- 
minded and  incompetent  and  holds  them  up  to  the 
gaze  of  the  multitude  and  declares  that  these  are 
the  men  who  are  the  slaves  of  grinding  toil,  who  have 
been  ground  down  to  their  sad  condition  by  the  iron 
heel  of  capital,  and  that  these  are  the  men  for  whom 
the  unions  are  fighting,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
prestidigitator  is  picking  the  pockets  of  the  men  for 
whom  he  pretends  to  have  so  much  sympathy.  It  is 
these  men,  the  incompetent  and  feeble-minded,  that 
labor  agitators  control  and  use  as  a  club  to  drive 
competent  and  worthy  men  into  the  ranks  of  the 
unions.  It  is  perhaps  these  men  to  whom  "the 
master  of  a  million  minds"  in  his  gloomy  forecast 
refers  when  he  speaks  of  "the  workman  who  toils 
for  wages  and  expects  to  end  his  days  in  the  wage- 
earning  class,  as  conditions  seem  to  point."  It  seems 
possible  that  these  men  might  be  enrolled  into  some 
kind  of  an  organization,  which,  under  the  guidance 
of  men  of  highly  developed  altruistic  natures,  could 
be  useful  to  themselves  and  to  society;  but  the  pro- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  181 

priety  of  society  allowing  them  to  be  used  by  selfish, 
unprincipled  men  as  a  club  to  control  the  actions  of 
men  capable  of  managing  their  own  affairs,  and  of 
enjoying  their  independence  and  freedom,  is  not  only 
doubtful,  but  is  positively  negatived.  A  moment's 
reflection  should  satisfy  any  thoughtful  person  that 
the  improvement  of  the  condition  of  these  men  who 
are  easy  victims  of  the  union  leaders,  should  have 
been  undertaken  before  they  were  born. 

Every  man  with  sympathy  in  his  nature  must  pro- 
foundly regret  this  waste  and  wreckage  of  our  race ; 
but  the  man  with  a  well-balanced  mind  will  not 
allow  it  to  dwell  on  this  sad  picture  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  that  is  good  and  beautiful  around  him; 
will  not  allow  these  incidental  features,  these  neces- 
sary features  of  evolving  social  life,  to  cloud  his 
mind  with  darkest  pessimism.  We  should  do  all  in 
our  power  to  see  to  it  that  there  shall  be  less  of  this 
waste  and  wreckage  of  our  race  in  the  coming  gen- 
erations, and  to  also  see  to  it  that  the  vampires  of 
the  unions  shall  be  prevented  from  living  off  of  the 
toil  of  these  unfortunate  men.  We  cannot  think  of 
a  left  hand  without  thinking  of  a  right  hand,  and 
we  cannot  think  of  a  society  without  thinking  of  it 
having  men  of  all  shades  of  intelligence  from  the 
mind  nearly  a  blank  up  to  the  mind  of  a  Newton 
who  enunciates  laws  of  matter,  motion  and  force  by 
which  the  movements  and  positions  of  planets  in 
their  orbits  are  calculated  and  foretold  with  accuracy 
for  hundreds  or  even  thousands  of  years  in  the  future. 
This  pessimism  with  which  the  unions  have  always 


182  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

been  afflicted ;  which  prevents  them  from  seeing  any 
good  in  anything  or  anybody  outside  their  own 
ranks,  which  regards  life  more  of  a  curse  than  a 
blessing,  and  with  which  they  would  infect  all  others, 
belongs  to  that  side  of  our  nature  which  has  not 
the  moral  courage  to  face  difficulties,  or  to  dive 
into  the  fathomless  depths  of  the  deep  and  "drag 
up  drowned  honor  by  the  locks."  We  ought  not 
perhaps  be  surprised  at  this  organized  pessimism 
of  the  unions;  this  survival  of  almost  universal 
pessimism,  when  we  reflect  that  up  to  recent  times, 
the  peoples  from  whom  we  have  descended,  were 
nearly  all  pessimists;  took  a  very  gloomy  view  of 
life;  looked  upon  life  as  a  journey  through  a  vale 
of  tears,  and  regarded  life  as  rather  more  of  a  curse 
than  as  a  blessing.  Our  ancestors,  however,  differed 
from  the  modern  pessimists  of  the  unions  in  this: 
that  they  inflicted  pain  and  suffering  upon  them- 
selves, like  the  Flagellants  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
no  thought  of  making  others  suffer,  whereas  the  mod- 
ern pessimists  of  the  unions  inflicts  pain  and  suffer- 
ing upon  themselves  for  the  distinct  purpose  of 
making  whole  communities  suffer.  But  all  the  pes- 
simism is  not  in  the  unions. 

To  understand  why  we  have  so  much  pessimism 
among  us,  we  must  go  back  for  a  moment  and  look 
at  the  condition  of  the  peoples,  of  the  nations  from 
whom  we  have  descended  during  the  long,  terrible 
night  of  darkness,  gloom,  affliction,  terror  and  de- 
spair, through  which  they  passed  during  the  Dark 
Ages  of  the  eleventh,  twelfth,  thirteenth  and  four- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  183 

teenth  centuries.  In  the  religious  wars  of  the  Cru- 
sades for  the  possession  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and 
Holy  Land,  which  lasted  from  the  first  to  the  end  of 
the  seventh  Crusade,  about  two  hundred  years  in  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries,  during  which  time 
Europe  was  precipitated  upon  Asia,  the  Cross  upon 
the  Crescent,  Christendom  upon  Mohammedanism, 
the  best  blood  of  the  nations  of  Europe  was  sacri- 
ficed, and  with  it  approximately  one  hundred  mil- 
lions of  lives.  When  the  nations  of  Europe  had 
exhausted  themselves  in  the  long  and  destructive 
wars  of  the  Crusades,  and  had  fairly  commenced  to 
rehabilitate  themselves,  to  rebuild  their  cities  and 
towns,  and  improve  their  feudal  estates,  which  had 
fallen  into  decay,  a  new  affliction  came  upon  them 
with  crushing  weight,  the  Oriental  Plague,  known  as 
the  Great  Mortality,  or  Black  Death,  from  the  symp- 
toms manifested,  which  lasted  with  extraordinary 
violence  during  a  period  of  about  fourteen  years 
(1347-60),  from  China  to  the  western  shores  of  Eu- 
rope, claiming  as  victims  forty  to  fifty  millions  of 
people.  A  few  years  prior  to  the  breaking  out  of 
this  terrible  plague  a  succession  of  extraordinary 
meteorological  conditions  and  unusual  natural  phe- 
nomena prevailed  in  all  the  countries  from  China  to 
the  Atlantic.  The  foundations  of  the  earth  were 
shaken;  there  were  subterraneous  thunders,  destruc- 
tive earthquakes,  volcanic  eruptions,  meteors  of  such 
extraordinary  brilliancy  as  to  be  visible  in  the  day- 
time; terrible  drouths,  and  famines  with  the  starva- 
tion of  millions  of  people,  followed  by  seasons  of 


184  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

torrential  rains,  causing  the  overflowing  of  rivers 
and  streams  and  inundations  of  their  valleys  far 
beyond  their  former  high  water  marks,  submerging 
cities  and  towns,  causing  great  loss  of  life  and  prop- 
erty. These  extraordinary  convulsions  and  disturb- 
ances of  the  forces  of  nature,  and  terrifying  natural 
phenomena  in  an  age  of  dense  ignorance  and  super- 
stition and  mental  weakness;  in  an  age  too,  when 
the  strongest  and  best  men  had  been  carried  away 
by  the  religious  fanaticism  that  led  them  to  sacrifice 
their  lives  in  the  wars  of  the  Crusades,  had  helped 
to  prepare  the  minds  of  the  people  for  that  deeper 
pessimism  which  came  upon  them  during  and  follow- 
ing the  terrible  affliction  of  the  Oriental  Plague  or 
Black  Death,  which  claimed  its  millions  of  victims 
of  every  nation  of  Europe.  There  had  been  other 
destructive  plagues  in  nearly  every  century  of  his- 
toric times ;  but  the  mortality  from  the  Black  Death 
Plague  was  so  great  that  some  of  the  countries  of 
Europe  lost  in  a  few  years  from  one-half  to  two- 
thirds  or  three-fourths  of  their  population.  Indeed 
in  some  instances  the  populations  of  entire  cities  and 
communities  were  wiped  out,  and  ships  lost  all  their 
crews  and  were  seen  drifting  about  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  North  Seas,  spreading  the  plague  where 
they  touched  the  shores.  The  long  wars  of  the  Cru- 
sades had  continually  selected  out  the  best  of  the 
population  of  Europe  for  nearly  two  hundred  years, 
leaving  at  home  the  mentally  and  physically  weak  to 
multiply  and  perpetuate  their  kind,  so  that  when 
the  Black  Death  broke  out  with  such  extraordinary 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  185 

violence  and  fatal  effects,  which  was  without  a  par- 
allel and  beyond  description,  the  mental  shock  was 
so  great  that  many  fell  victims  from  fear  on  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  first  symptoms  of  the  attack.  These 
awful  conditions  of  horror,  fear,  dread,  distress  and 
despair,  were  not  confined  to  a  few  isolated  com- 
munities ;  but  as  the  plague  rapidly  spread,  they  pre- 
vailed over  all  the  countries  of  Europe.  We  are  told 
in  the  chronicles  of  the  times  by  those  who  attempted 
to  describe  the  symptoms  and  prognosis  of  the  dis- 
ease, that  it  infected  the  air,  and  that  flight  was  of 
no  avail  to  those  who  fled  from  their  homes,  because 
the  germs  of  the  distemper  adhered  to  them  and  they 
fell  sick  and  died  unattended.  In  the  early  part  of 
this  great  scourge  when  all  the  countries  of  Europe 
were  full  of  desolation,  anguish,  suffering,  lamenta- 
tions and  woe,  and  involved  in  the  deepest  pessimism, 
there  arose  in  Hungary  and  afterwards  in  Germany, 
the  Brotherhood  of  the  Flagellants,  or  Brotherhood 
of  the  Cross,  who  "  took  upon  themselves  the  repent- 
ance of  the  people  for  the  sins  they  had  committed, 
and  offered  prayers  and  supplications  for  the  avert- 
ing of  the  plague."  In  a  short  time  these  Brother- 
hoods of  Flagellants  appeared  in  nearly  all  the  coun- 
tries of  Europe,  marching  in  well  organized  proces- 
sions of  hundreds,  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands, 
with  leaders  and  singers,  through  the  cities,  bearing 
torches  and  magnificent  banners  of  velvet  and  cloth 
of  gold,  and  uttering  as  they  marched  the  doleful 
melancholy  chant  of  the  deeply  penitent.  They 
spread  the  plague  to  all  the  places  where  they  con- 


186  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

ducted  their  pilgrimages.  They  are  described  as  be- 
ing robed  in  sombre  garments,  their  heads  covered 
as  far  as  the  eyes,  their  eyes  directed  to  the  ground, 
with  expressions  of  deepest  contrition  and  mourning, 
each  with  a  red  cross  on  the  breast  and  back  and  cap, 
and  each  carrying  a  scourge  of  leathern  thongs  with 
three  or  four  knots  in  it,  which  they  applied  to  their 
limbs  amid  sighs  and  tears,  with  such  force  as  to 
cause  the  blood  to  trickle  from  the  wounds.  They 
soon,  however,  became  troublesome  to  the  church  and 
secular  authorities.  Vice  and  corruption  crept  into 
the  order  of  these  religious  fanatics.  Crimes  and 
excesses  were  committed  by  them  everywhere,  and 
gradually  they  ceased  to  excite  reverence  and  aston- 
ishment and  were  no  longer  welcomed  to  the  cities 
by  the  ringing  of  bells  and  public  demonstrations  in 
their  honor.  Indeed  they  fell  into  such  disfavor  that 
their  public  penances  were  interdicted  by  the  Pope 
and  they  passed  out  of  notice  before  the  closing 
years  of  the  Black  Death  pestilence. 

We  should  mention  that  along  with  the  terrible 
Black  Death  tragedy,  there  subsisted  a  tragedy 
which,  while  less  destructive  of  human  life,  than 
the  former,  was  of  a  character  that  shows  the  depths 
to  which  the  human  mind  had  dwindled  in  its  pes- 
simistic view  of  life,  in  the  horrible  and  bloody  per- 
secution of  the  Jews.  The  pious  humility,  lamenta- 
tions and  woe  in  the  midst  of  the  indescribable 
scenes  of  the  plague,  did  not  lessen  in  the  breasts  of 
devout  Christians,  their  thirst  for  blood  and  ven- 
geance against  those  who  were  opposed  to  the  dom- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  187 

inant  religion  of  the  times.  We  are  told  in  the  chron- 
icles and  by  the  historians  of  the  times  that  the  Jews 
were  accused  of  bringing  the  Great  Mortality  upon 
the  Christians  by  poisoning  the  wells  and  infecting 
the  air  with  disease.  In  most  of  the  countries  of 
Europe  they  were  persecuted  with  relentless  cruelty 
by  the  Christians  and  slaughtered  and  burnt  alive 
by  hundreds  and  thousands  and  their  gold  coin  and 
treasure  confiscated.  It  is  stated  that  at  Strasburg 
two  thousand  were  burned  alive  in  their  own  burial 
ground,  and  that  at  Mayence  twelve  thousand  were 
cruelly  put  to  death. 

After  the  passing  of  the  Black  Death  Plague,  the 
vanishing  of  the  Brotherhood  of  the  Flagellants,  and 
the  extermination  of  the  Jews,  the  surviving  peoples 
of  the  almost  depopulated  countries  of  Europe,  were 
left  in  a  debilitated,  morbid  nervous  condition. 
While  the  effects  of  the  plague  were  still  felt,  and 
the  graves  of  its  millions  of  victims  were  scarcely 
all  closed,  there  arose  in  Germany  a  strange  mental 
disorder  which  took  possession  of  the  minds  and 
bodies  of  men  and  women,  causing  them  to  display 
various  kinds  of  convulsive  movements,  as  leaping 
and  dancing  and  contortions  of  the  most  extraordin- 
ary character.  This  demoniacal  malady  known  as 
the  Dancing  Mania  of  the  Middle  Ages,  at  the  time  it 
was  prevalent  "  was  called  the  dance  of  St.  John 
or  St.  Vitus,  on  account  of  the  Bacchantic  leaps  by 
which  it  was  characterized,  and  which  gave  those 
affected,  while  performing  their  wild  dance,  and 
screaming  and  foaming,  all  the  appearance  of  per- 


188  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

sons  possessed!"  It  was  stated  by  observers  that 
while  the  attack  lasted,  those  affected  appeared  to 
lose  control  of  their  senses  of  sight  and  hearing,  and 
that  when  they  came  to  themselves  they  claimed  that 
they  did  not  know  what  they  had  been  doing,  "  but 
felt  as  if  they  had  been  immersed  in  streams  of 
blood,"  causing  them  to  leap  with  the  utmost  exer- 
tion. Nearly  all  asserted  that  they  had  been  haunted 
by  visions  of  spirits  of  some  kind  or  other,  or  that 
during  the  paroxisms  the  heavens  had  opened  to 
them,  and  that  they  had  seen  the  Savior  enthroned 
with  the  Virgin  Mary.  This  mental  disorder  seems 
to  have  been  contagious  by  sight  from  sympathy, 
for  wherever  the  St.  Vitus  dancers  appeared,  their 
ranks  were  rapidly  recruited  from  the  hundreds  and 
thousands,  who  from  curiosity,  flocked  to  the 
churches  and  streets  to  witness  their  extraordinary 
conduct.  They  are  described  as  forming  in  circles 
hand  in  hand,  and  losing  control  of  their  senses,  to 
dance  for  hours  in  wild  delirium  until  they  fell  down 
from  exhaustion.  After  falling  from  exhaustion 
they  complained  of  extreme  oppression  and  groaned 
and  writhed  as  if  in  the  agonies  of  death,  until  the 
swathing  cloth,  which  each  carried,  was  applied 
tightly  bound  around  the  waist  to  relieve  the  tym- 
pany  which  followed  each  spasmodic  raving.  As  this 
mental  disorder  spread  over  several  of  the  coun- 
tries of  Europe,  swarms  of  the  St.  Vitus  dancers 
strolled  from  town  to  town  and  were  frequently 
passing  through  the  cities  day  and  night  accompanied 
by  noisy  musicians  playing  on  bagpipes  and  other 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  189 

rude  instruments  which  tended  to  rouse  their  morbid 
feelings.  We  almost  invariably  hear  of  music  in  con- 
nection with  the  performances  of  the  dancers,  and 
the  testimony  of  many  observers  shows  that  it  was 
an  important  factor  in  exciting  the  dancing  fit,  and 
from  the  effects  of  which  the  patients  were  thrown 
into  a  state  of  convulsions.  It  also  had  the  effect 
of  contributing  to  the  continuance  and  spread  of 
the  malady;  of  originating  and  increasing  the  viol- 
lence  of  the  paroxysms,  and  was  sometimes  the  cause 
of  their  mitigation.  Music  has  always  had  the  effect 
of  giving  expression  to  the  feelings,  and  that  lively 
melodies  or  airs  accompanied  by  the  shrill  tones  of 
the  fife  and  trumpet,  containing  transitions  from 
slow  to  quick  measure,  and  passing  from  a  high  to  a 
low  key,  would  excite  those  affected  into  the  utmost 
fury  of  dancing. 

Think  of  the  streets  of  the  cities  filled  with  thous- 
ands of  these  mad  fanatics,  dancing  with  wild  de- 
monical fury,  and  we  have  a  scene  which  would 
require  the  highest  skill  of  the  artist  to  depict  with 
accuracy.  Those  affected  with  the  disorder  had  some 
aversions  which  they  did  not  hesitate  to  manifest  on 
suitable  occasions.  They  could  not  tolerate  red, 
and  persons  dressed  in  red  coming  into  their  pres- 
ence, they  flew  at  with  such  fury  as  if  bent  on  tear- 
ing off  the  clothing  which  excited  their  animosity. 
They  also  had  a  morbid  dislike  for  the  pointed  shoes 
which  had  come  into  fashion  since  the  breaking  out 
of  the  Black  Death  Plague,  and  would  not  tolerate 
any  other  than  squared  toed  shoes,  so  that  an  ex- 


190  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

press  ordinance  was  issued  that  no  one  should  make 
any  other  than  squared  toed  shoes,  a  morbid  notion 
that  is  matched  at  the  present  time  by  the  unions 
making  laws  prohibiting  any  one  from  working  who 
does  not  belong  to  their  organization,  and  would  not 
allow  any  manufactured  article  of  common  use  sold 
or  offered  for  sale  that  does  not  bear  the  union  label. 
The  Dancing  Mania  in  Italy,  known  as  Tarantism, 
appeared  at  Apulia  about  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  spreading  over  different  provinces  as 
an  epidemic,  lasted  more  than  two  centuries.  While 
the  symptoms  and  manifestations  of  those  afflicted 
with  the  malady,  were  almost  identical  with  those  of 
the  St.  Vitus  dancers,  the  Tarantists  believed  or 
imagined  that  their  disease  was  caused  by  the  bite  of 
the  tarantula,  a  species  of  ground  spider  then  found 
in  some  parts  of  Italy.  They,  like  the  St.  Vitus 
dancers,  had  a  morbid  longing  for  music,  and  an  ab- 
horrence for  certain  colors,  and  went  into  ecstasies 
at  the  sight  of  others.  We  cannot  dwell  on  these 
nervous  disorders,  but  must  pass  on  and  barely  men- 
tion the  Dancing  Mania  or  Tigretier  of  Abyssina,  the 
Convulsionaires  of  France  (1727-90),  and  Choria, 
Sancti  Viti,  or  St.  Vitus  dance,  a  form  of  intense  re- 
ligious enthusiasm  that  swept  over  parts  of 'Virginia, 
Tennessee  and  Kentucky  as  an  epidemic  the  early 
part  of  last  century,  persons  now  living  having  heard 
their  grand  parents  refer  to  it.  Passing  over  the  lesser 
outbreaks  of  these  nervous  disorders  and  mental  de- 
lusions, which  perhaps  lie  latent  in  a  majority  of 
the  people  to  be  called  into  activity  under  suitable 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  191 

conditions,  we  come  to  the  most  recent  outbreak  of 
them,  which  appeared  under  the  name  of  populism, 
following  close  upon  the  almost  universal  pervalence 
of  La  Grippe,  and  the  unusual  drouth  that  affected 
a  large  part  of  the  farming  population  of  the  middle 
west,  and  by  reaction  all  other  interests.  In  Kansas, 
a  State  having  a  population  of  unusual  intelligence 
and  a  fine  sense  of  honor,  a  majority  perhaps  of  those 
owing  debts,  were  seized  with  a  desire  and  deter- 
mination to  repudiate  them  or  scale  them,  so  thor- 
oughly was  the  nervous  disease  or  mental  delusion 
developed  by  the  ranting  and  foaming  at  the  mouth 
of  those  who  always  appear  on  the  scene  when  the 
conditions  are  favorable  for  pouring  out  their  pessi- 
mistic lamentations. 

It  may  be  asked  why  mention  these  nervous  dis- 
orders and  mental  delusions  extending  back  through 
the  centuries,  in  connection  with  unionism?  We  re- 
ply, simply  to  show  that  perhaps  a  majority  of  per- 
sons are  susceptible  of  having  developed  in  them 
these  nervous  disorders  and  mental  delusions,  which 
when  controlled  by  evil-minded  men,  may  hurry  the 
patient  on  into  deepest  pessimism  and  ruin,  such  as 
we  see  manifested  by  the  unions.  Even  some  of  the 
leaders  of  the  unions  who  are  more  gifted  with  lo- 
quacity than  good  judgment,  may  half  believe  in 
the  absurdities  and  pernicious  doctrines  they  are  con- 
stantly preaching,  such  for  instance  that  organized 
labor  should  have  special  privileges  and  immunities 
over  independent  labor;  that  state  and  municipal 
authorities  should  discriminate  in  favor  of  union 


192  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

labor  in  letting  out  public  work.  Every  sensible  man 
knows  that  there  is  no  merit  in  unionism  as  it  now 
exists, — not  more  than  there  was  in  the  Brother- 
hood of  the  Flagellants,  the  St.  Vitus  dancers,  or 
the  Tarantists;  that  it  is  largely  an  organization 
of  violent,  vicious  and  feeble-minded,  controlled  and 
manipulated  by  bad  men  to  drive  good  worthy  men 
into  it,  and  who  pretend  that  they  are  friends  of 
the  laboring  man,  but  who  in  reality  are  his  worst 
enemy,  and  do  more  to  bring  suffering  and  hardships 
upon  laboring  men  and  their  families  by  throwing 
the  men  out  of  work  in  ordering  them  out  on  strikes, 
and  otherwise  robbing  them  of  their  wages,  than  all 
other  causes  put  together. 

Only  those  who  take  a  pessimistic  view  of  life, 
could  urge  their  fellowmen  to  hate  their  benefactors 
or  those  who  enable  them  to  earn  an  honest  living ; 
to  hate  the  government  and  the  flag  and  courts  that 
gives  them  protection,  to  hate  the  honest  man  who 
loves  to  work  and  support  his  family;  to  hate  the 
man  who  will  not  starve  his  wife  and  children  to 
give  his  wages  to  men  who  never  strike  or  never 
sweat;  to  hate  the  man  who  will  not  do  as  little 
work  as  possible  for  his  employer  to  hold  his  job; 
to  hate  the  man  who  loves  independence  and  free- 
dom and  refuses  to  pay  labor  officials  heavy  fees  for 
permission  to  work  and  to  give  a  lien  on  his  wages 
while  permitted  to  work;  to  hate  a  member  who 
would  be  tender-hearted  about  wrecking  a  passenger 
train,  dynamiting  a  street  car,  bridge,  a  home,  or 
railroad  station,  for  the  purpose  of  striking  terror 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  193 

into  the  minds  of  those  who  would  dare  question 
the  methods  of  union  labor.  No  one  except  those 
who  take  a  pessimistic  view  of  life,  would  show  such 
supreme  selfishness  as  to  wish  to  appropriate  the 
means  of  happiness  of  nine-tenths  of  their  f ellowmen, 
or  would  wish  to  prevent  nine-tenths  of  their  fellow- 
men  from  earning  an  honest  living  to  support  their 
families,  or  would  demand  more  rights,  privileges 
and  immunities  than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to 
all  others.  No  one  except  those  who  take  a  pessimis- 
tic view  of  life,  could  deliberately  and  maliciously 
destroy  the  prosperity  of  communities  and  individ- 
uals, and  wholly  disregard  the  common  welfare  for 
the  purpose  of  enforcing  unjust  and  unlawful  de- 
mands in  order  to  make  himself  one  of  a  favored 
class. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  GENERAL  AND  STATE  GOVERNMENTS 
SUFFICIENT. 

We  cannot  even  think  of  unionism  without  asking 
ourselves,  Are  the  General  and  State  Governments 
sufficient  to  secure  to  every  citizen  his  rights  and 
justice?  This  question  is  an  issue  between  those 
who  give  their  allegiance  to  the  General  and  State 
Governments  and  those  who  give  their  allegiance  to 
the  unions.  It  is  here  held  that  the  laws  of  the 
country  have  been  enacted  with  the  view  of  secur- 
ing to  every  man  equal  rights  and  justice,  and  to 
protect  every  man  in  his  equal  rights.  It  is  truly  a 
satisfaction  to  know  that  we  have  been  able  to  secure 
the  enactment  of  such  just  laws,  and  the  enactment 
of  these  laws  show  that  more  than  one-half  of  the 
people  have,  in  their  sober  moments,  been  educated 
up  to  a  sentiment  that  demands  that  the  freedom  of 
each  shall  be  limited  only  by  the  like  freedom  of  all. 

The  unions  hold,  or  the  directors  of  their  principles 
and  policies  hold,  that  the  General  and  State  Gov- 
ernments are  not  sufficient,  and  where  the  unions 
are  well  organized  these  officials  demand  that  the 
General  and  State  Governments  abdicate  their 
authority  and  propose  to  substitute  the  authority 
of  the  unions  in  regulating  the  affairs  of  men 

194 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  195 

and  their  relations  to  each  other.  Whenever  the 
union  officials  establish  a  reign  of  terror  in  a 
community  by  inciting  their  followers  to  lawless 
acts,  and  the  people  appeal  to  the  constituted 
authorities  for  protection,  the  masters  protest 
against  the  sending  of  the  protecting  force,  and 
on  its  arrival  demand  its  withdrawal.  The  working 
members  of  the  unions  having  been  prevailed  upon 
to  surrender  their  independence  and  freedom,  have 
been  led  by  selfish  and  unsympathetic  leaders  to 
commit  excesses  on  their  fellowmen  that  would 
shame  the  lowest  savages.  The  treasonable  nature 
of  the  organization  has  been  time  and  again  shown, 
by  its  membership  giving  allegiance  to  its  authority 
rather  than  to  the  authority  of  the  State.  It  has 
with  the  view  of  defeating  the  ends  of  justice  when 
its  members  were  on  trial  for  atrocious  crimes,  in 
which  they  were  caught  red  handed,  caused  the 
assassination  of  important  witnesses  who  were  to 
appear  on  behalf  of  the  State.  It  has  made  loud 
complaints  of  the  miscarriage  of  the  laws,  when  it 
was  the  most  potent  factor  in  bringing  about  their 
miscarriage.  It  has  vehemently  denounced  the  cap- 
italistic trusts,  apparently  unconscious  of  the  fact 
that  the  Labor  Trust  is  the  most  oppressive  of  all 
trusts.  It  has  suddenly  quit  the  service  of  public 
utilities  corporations  and  by  violence  stopped  their 
operations,  and  then  demanded  of  the  State  that  it 
compel  these  public  utilities  corporations  to  continue 
in  operation.  Our  entire  system  of  government  is 
built  upon  the  idea  of  industrial  and  commercial  free- 


196  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

dom,  and  yet  the  leaders  of  unionism  would  destroy 
that  system  without  offering  anything  better  than  an- 
archy as  a  substitute.  Think  of  an  organization 
growing  up  in  our  midst,  one  of  whose  officials  may 
go  to  an  honest,  hard  working  man  and  say  to  him, 
"  if  you  do  not  do  all  you  can  to  ruin  your  neighbor 
and  friend,  we  will  ruin  you, ' '  and  of  the  conspirator 
being  able  to  make  good  his  threat.  The  head  of 
the  General  Government,  the  president,  is  not  clothed 
with  a  power  by  which  he  can  on  his  own  motion,  de- 
stroy the  lawful  business  of  a  law-abiding  citizen,  yet 
we  tolerate  an  organization  whose  officials  openly 
boast  of  being  able  to  destroy  the  business  of  any 
man  who  comes  under  their  displeasure,  and  who  are 
constantly  making  good  their  boast.  It  will  not  be 
denied  that  a  man  has  as  much  right  to  have  his 
business  protected  from  destruction  by  boycott,  as 
he  has  to  have  it  protected  from  destruction  by 
organized  bandits. 

Among  thinkers  it  is  conceded  that  it  is  the  func- 
tion of  government  to  protect  its  citizens  in  their 
equal  rights  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  to  happi- 
ness, and  the  extent  that  our  government  has  fallen 
short  of  this  duty,  is  due  to  the  fact  of  its  leniency 
in  allowing  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  to  set  up 
an  opposing  authority,  an  authority  which  is  based 
upon  the  survival  of  primitive  instincts  that  disre- 
gard all  laws  of  justice  and  equal  rights.  There  is 
bound  to  be  ceaseless  conflict  between  these  dual 
governments,  the  government  of  the  people  and  the 
minority  government  of  the  unions,  until  one  or  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  197 

other  shall  by  force  of  arms  or  public  opinion,  be 
compelled  to  abdicate  its  authority  and  pretentious. 
In  the  Pittsburg  labor  riots  of  1877,  and  in  the  Debs 
rebellion  of  1894,  the  State  Governments  were  unable 
to  control  the  situations,  and  the  General  Govern- 
ment was  obliged  to  intervene  and  call  on  the  Regu- 
lar Army  to  charge  the  union  rioters  and  disperse 
them.  When  the  situation  became  so  desperate  that 
the  unions  and  their  sympathizers  threatened  to 
loot  the  U.  S.  Treasury  in  Washington  and  a  war 
vessel  stood  in  the  Potomac  with  its  guns  trained 
on  the  approaches  to  the  Treasury,  there  were  in- 
telligent men  who  thought  that  the  fate  of  the  Gen- 
eral Government  trembled  in  the  balance. 

No  doubt  the  General  and  State  Governments  are 
sufficient  to  enforce  the  laws  for  the  protection  of 
persons  and  property  if  they  were  loyally  supported, 
but  they  would  not  be  loyally  supported  under  exist- 
ing conditions  if  a  labor  disturbance  national  in  its 
scope  should  be  precipitated,  for  "  the  master  of  a 
million  minds  "  of  the  federated  unions  would  claim 
the  allegiance  of  all  his  slaves  throughout  the  coun- 
try. This  large  militant  organization,  composed  of 
men  who  have  surrendered  their  independence  and 
freedom  as  citizens,  and  obedient  to  the  commands 
of  their  masters,  is  a  constant  menace  to  the  peace 
of  society  and  the  stability  of  the  government  when 
dominated  by  such  reckless  leaders  as  it  has  invar- 
iably had,  whose  selfish  greed  and  meddling  conduct, 
are  as  oppressive  to  organized  labor  as  to  the  busi- 
ness interests  of  the  country.  It  is  a  notorious  fact 


198  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

that  the  masters  meddle  in  the  daily  affairs  of  mem- 
bers in  matters  in  which  law  and  custom  leave  them 
free,  and  in  which  negro  slaves  were  allowed  to  exer- 
cise their  freedom.  Even  when  the  unions  by  their 
lawlessness  and  violence  have  paralyzed  the  peaceful 
activities  of  a  large  section  of  the  country,  as  they 
have  frequently  done,  the  friends  of  law  and  order 
and  equal  rights  among  men,  have  not  lost  faith  in 
the  ultimate  triumph  of  government  of  the  people, 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  instead  of  gov- 
ernment by  a  faction  and  for  a  faction.  These  con- 
stant attacks  on  law  and  order  by  the  unions,  these 
frequent  displays  of  the  primitive  survivals  of  the 
savage  instincts,  ought  to  be  useful  to  the  sociolo- 
gist in  measuring  our  progress,  and  as  showing  the 
proportion  of  our  people  who  have  no  developed 
moral  sense,  no  developed  conceptions  of  equal  rights 
to  industrial  and  commercial  freedom. 

In  the  laboratories  of  bacteriologists,  and  in  the 
laboratories  of  research  institutes,  much  information 
in  recent  years  has  been  obtained  and  given  to  the 
world  in  regard  to  immunity  from  disease ;  in  regard 
to  protecting  the  human  organism  against  the  fatal 
effects  of  diseases  which  were  once  a  scourge  to  the 
world,  by  introducing  into  the  system  vaccine,  anti- 
toxin, or  serums,  or  by  destroying  the  insect,  as  the 
mosquito,  which  carries  and  inoculates  the  individual 
with  the  poisonous  germ  or  destructive  parasite,  as 
in  cases  of  yellow  fever.  For  centuries  there  were 
periodical  outbreaks  of  smallpox,  yellow  fever,  and 
other  diseases,  which  were  terrible  scourages,  fre- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  199 

quently  almost  depopulating  communities,  but  which 
by  scientific  treatment,  have  passed  practically  under 
the  control  of  man  and  lost  most  of  the  terror  which 
formerly  characterized  them.  All  these  terrible  dis- 
eases which  have  afflicted  the  human  race,  belonged 
to  particular  stages  of  intellectual  development  and 
civilization,  and  having  been  brought  under  con- 
trol, certainly  encourages  us  to  hope  that  the  conduct 
of  the  unions,  which  is  a  survival  from  primitive  con- 
ditions and  the  scourge  of  the  social  organism,  will 
be  brought  under  control  by  scientific  treatment. 
The  influence  of  rational  altruism,  charity,  and  fra- 
ternal love,  and  the  frequent  benefactions  of  the 
more  fortunate  to  the  less  fortunate,  must  gradually 
have  a  leavening  effect  upon  the  minds  of  those 
who  have  heard  little  else  than  teachings  of  hate 
for  their  fellowmen  by  the  evil-minded  proponents 
of  unionism  and  socialism.  The  pretended  ideals  of 
these  two  great  national  evils  are  somewhat  differ- 
ent, but  the  teachings  of  hate  by  their  leaders  for  all 
progressive  ideals  are  practically  the  same. 

There  is  no  other  power  that  can  rightfully  super- 
sede the  State,  the  will  of  all  the  people,  and  it  is 
sufficient  to  the  extent  that  it  enforces  their  will  as 
expressed  in  the  laws.  Our  National  Constitution 
was  formed  after  the  most  careful  deliberation  in 
the  interest  of  all  the  people,  and  the  enactment  of 
any  law  discriminating  in  favor  of  any  class  tend- 
ing to  make  it  a  class  of  special  privileges,  would  be 
unjust  to  all  other  classes,  as  well  as  unconstitutional. 
In  this  age  of  general  enlightment  no  self-respecting 


200  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

man  or  body  of  men  who  have  the  public  good  at 
heart,  can  demand  such  legislation. 

We  have  heard  a  good  deal  of  talk  from  the  re- 
actionary masters  about  the  ideals  of  the  labor  move- 
ment, but  such  talk  reminds  us  of  the  talk  about  the 
beauties  of  negro  slavery  by  its  proponents  up  to  the 
Civil  War.  With  the  destruction  of  negro  slavery, 
the  philosophic  thinker  could  safely  have  predicted 
the  development  of  a  milder  form  of  slavery  upon 
its  ruins,  for  all  progress  has  been  marked  by  as 
many  periods  of  retrogression  as  periods  of  progres- 
sion. After  overthrowing  the  aristocratic  regime  in 
the  French  Revolution  and  the  corruptions  which 
had  grown  up  under  it,  the  reactionaries  of  the  revo- 
lutionists who  had  secured  control,  were  found  com- 
mitting excesses  more  shameful  than  those  under  the 
conditions  the  Revolution  was  intended  to  remedy. 

A  machine  may  be  constructed  according  to  the 
principles  of  mechanics,  intended  to  bear  a  calcu- 
lated strain,  but  if  the  material  of  some  of  the  parts 
are  not  up  to  a  certain  standard  of  strength,  it  will 
break  down  before  reaching  the  calculated  strain. 
So  a  government  may  be  founded  on  correct  and  just 
principles,  principles  and  policies  which  when  en- 
acted into  laws  and  loyally  enforced,  will  give  equal 
protection  to  all,  and  equal  liberty  to  exercise  their 
faculties ;  but  if  there  is  rotten  material  in  the  social 
structure,  if  there  are  disloyal  elements  organized 
into  factions  that  demand  and  usurp  special  priv- 
ileges, that  demand  special  advantages  to  the  detri- 
ment and  injury  of  others;  that  demand  and  usurp 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  201 

more  privileges  than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to 
all  others,  then  a  government  that  fails  to  check 
these  aggressions  and  usurpations  of  the  rotten,  dis- 
loyal elements,  fails  of  its  purpose,  fails  so  miserably 
as  to  lose  the  respect  of  its  supporters.  It  is  perhaps 
a  safe  proposition  to  state  that  a  government  is  not 
likely  to  be  much  better  than  the  average  of  its 
people.  If  the  average  ideals  of  the  people  are  of 
a  low  order ;  if  on  the  average  they  have  little  respect 
for  each  others  rights  or  justice;  if  their  average 
conduct  is  corrupt  and  vicious,  then  the  government 
will  likely  be  corrupt,  weak  and  inefficient  and  un- 
able to  protect  fully  those  who  are  its  main  support 
from  the  aggressions  of  the  lawless  and  vicious  under 
the  leadership  of  men  who  live  by  creating  social 
disturbances.  We  believe  that  our  government  is 
founded  on  just  principles;  that  the  laws  with  few 
exceptions  have  been  framed  with  the  view  to  giving 
justice  and  equal  rights  to  all,  and  that  the  ma- 
chinery we  have  built  up  is  sufficient  to  protect  all 
the  people  in  their  equal  rights  if  we  see  to  it,  and 
do  not  allow  too  much  corrupt  and  rotten  material 
to  get  into  the  different  administrative  departments. 
While  there  shall  continue  to  exist  in  our  midst 
an  organization  which  we  regard,  which  all  law- 
abiding  men  regard,  as  steeped  in  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness,  an  organization  whose  purpose  is  to  over- 
ride the  laws  of  the  peoples  government,  the  friends 
of  law  and  order  and  equal  rights  should  have  a 
strong  counter  organization  whose  object  should  be 
to  see  that  the  laws  are  enforced,  and  to  see  that 


202  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

the  lawless  acts  and  pretentions  of  the  masters  of 
the  union  slavery  are  checked  before  assuming  such 
disastrous  proportions  as  have  frequently  character- 
ized them.  Take  from  this  organization  its  purpose 
and  power  to  interfere  with  the  rights  and  liberties 
of  others  outside  its  ranks  and  it  would  quickly  fall 
to  pieces.  It  thrives  on  envy,  hate  and  selfishness 
and  the  ruin  of  those  whose  honest  toil  and  provi- 
dence have  brought  homes  and  comforts  to  their 
families.  The  members,  but  not  the  officials  of  the 
organization,  endure  great  suffering  and  hardships 
in  order  to  bring  greater  suffering  and  hardships 
upon  others.  It  never  breathes  an  honest  purpose. 
Its  ideals  are  predatory  as  the  savage,  to  grab  the 
good  things  which  honest  toil  has  brought  others. 
The  masters  and  directors  of  its  principles  and 
policies  prate  about  liberty  and  patriotism  when 
addressing  the  public,  but  when  addressing  their  own 
loyal  slaves  in  their  star  chambers,  spit  upon  the 
flag,  the  emblem  of  liberty  and  equal  rights,  and 
order  their  thugs  and  sluggers  to  intimidate,  assault 
and  murder  independent  workers — because  they  en- 
deavor to  exercise  the  rights  and  privileges  guaran- 
teed them  under  the  laws  to  work  for  whom,  and 
under  such  conditions,  as  may  suit  them. 

Were  it  not  that  the  law-abiding  citizens  of  the 
community  look  to  the  government  which  they  are 
taxed  to  support  and  maintain,  to  afford  them  protec- 
tion against  the  aggressions,  oppressions  and  tyran- 
nies of  the  unions,  they  would  organize  for  their  own 
protection,  which  would  of  course  mean  the  end  of 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  203 

organized  government  as  we  know  it.  It  would  mean 
open  war  between  the  two  factions  and  the  re-estab- 
lishment of  another  government  according  to  the 
ideals  of  the  successful  faction.  The  masters  of  the 
union  slavery  not  only  assert  the  privilege  of  private 
war,  for  plunder  and  power,  as  in  baronial  and 
feudal  times,  but  they  demand  of  those  who  stand 
for  organized  government,  government  for  the  pro- 
tection of  all  in  their  equal  rights,  that  their  private 
wars  shall  be  legalized,  and  that  they  and  their  fol- 
lowers shall  be  an  excepted  class,  a  class  having 
special  privileges  and  immunities  from  prosecution 
and  punishment  for  violation  of  the  laws  in  cases 
of  intimidations,  assaults,  murder  and  destruction 
of  property.  They  claim  that  these  special  privileges 
and  immunities  are  necessary  to  improve  the  condi- 
tions of  organized  labor,  just  as  the  bandit  or  robber 
claims  that  his  operations  are  necessary  to  improve 
the  condition  and  standard  of  the  living  of  his 
family. 

The  proponents  of  unionism  are  the  only  class  of 
people  in  this  country  who  question  the  sufficiency  of 
our  Government,  and  their  opposition  is  not  on  the 
ground  that  it  fails  to  provide  for  the  equal  protec- 
tion of  all,  but  that  it  fails  to  provide  for  making 
them  an  excepted  class,  a  class  having  special  priv- 
ileges. 


CHAPTER  XV. 
SELLING  AND  BUYING  LABOR. 

In  the  world  of  labor  there  are  many  men  who 
sell  their  own  labor  or  services  and  buy  other  labor 
or  services  which  they  are  not  adapted  or  qualified 
to  perform  to  the  best  advantage.  All  sensible  men 
should  honor  and  respect  all  useful  labor.  But  a 
man  whose  occupation  is  regarded  by  most  people 
as  disagreeable,  or  dangerous,  as  for  instance,  that 
of  the  professional  miner,  should  not  assume  that 
his  class  is  the  only  class  of  men  who  can  justly 
claim  to  be  laborers.  Those  who  have  made  investi- 
gations in  regard  to  the  expenditure  of  energy,  know 
that  mental  work  is  as  exhausting  to  the  individual 
as  physical  work,  and  that  there  are  even  more 
nervous  breakdowns  among  the  mental  workers  than 
among  the  physical  workers  of  the  world.  Professor 
W.  B.  Taylor  of  the  Smithsonian  Institution,  Wash- 
ington, was  told  by  a  student  that  the  careful  read- 
ing for  hours  of  such  abstract  works  as  Mill 's  Logic, 
Herbert  Spencer's  First  Principles,  and  Principles 
of  Psychology,  caused  him  mental  fatigue,  and  asked 
the  Professor  how  much  physical  work  eight  hours 
of  steady,  careful  reading  of  such  works  would  be 
equivalent  to,  and  he  replied  that  it  would  be  equiv- 
alent to  the  expenditure  of  the  energy  of  a  man 

204 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  205 

working  steadily  on  a  rock  pile  breaking  rock  for 
the  same  length  of  time. 

Who  are  the  men  who  talk  so  pathetically  of  grind- 
ing toil  and  sweat  shops  as  if  they  were  the  only 
people  who  earned  their  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their 
brows?     Behold  them.     They  are  the  men  of  big 
boasting,  swaggering  conduct,  who  deal  in  myster- 
ious hints  and  veiled  threats  of  what  will  happen  if 
they  are  opposed,  and  who,  from  their  star  chambers 
direct  the  movements  of  the  vicious  and  weak-minded 
elements  of  the  unions  in  violent  and  unlawful  con- 
duct,— in  short,  the  men  who  never  strike  or  never 
sweat.    Every  one  who  has  passed  his  early  life  in 
physical  work,  as  the  work  on  a  farm,  and  later 
undertakes  to  fit  himself  for  any  of  the  professions, 
as  the  law,  the  practice  of  medicine,  or  in  engineer- 
ing, can  perhaps  testify  that  his  student  life  passed 
in  fitting  himself  for  his  chosen  profession,  or  even 
after  he  has  entered  upon  his  profession,  was  as 
exhausting,  as  fatiguing,  as  the  work  when  he  earned 
his  living  by  physical  labor.     Shall  we  rule  out  as 
unworthy  of  being  called  laborers  or  workers,  the 
lawyer  pouring  over  his  briefs  half  of  the  nights 
that  he  may  be  able  to  properly  present  the  cases  of 
his  clients  to  the  court  and  jury;  the  physician  who 
immediately  on  retiring  after  a  hard  day's  work,  is 
called  up  and  obliged  to  ride  nearly  all  night  in 
storms  of  rain  or  sleet  and  snow,  to  see  and  attend  a 
sick   patient;   the   civil   engineer   who   cudgels   his 
brains  over  some  problem  in  engineering  in  regard 
to  the  strength  of  material  in  a  bridge  or  building, 


206  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

on  the  safety  of  which  depends  the  lives  of  hundreds 
or  even  thousands  of  persons;  or  even  the  much 
maligned  railroad  president  whose  executive  ability 
is  taxed  to  the  utmost  in  providing  ways  and  means 
to  make  his  road  pay  its  stockholders,  a  large  pro- 
portion of  whom  are  people  of  moderate  means,  rea- 
sonable dividends  on  the  amounts  of  their  invest- 
ments, and  at  the  same  time  satisfy  the  demands  of 
the  public  and  the  employees  of  the  road?  If  the 
selfish  masters  of  the  union  slavery  were  obliged  to 
do  some  honest  work  they  would  probably  consider 
it  grinding  toil,  but  perhaps  most  independent  work- 
ers regard  ordinary  useful  labor  as  more  agreeable 
than  idleness  and  loafing.  To  most  professional 
men  who  have  freely  expended  their  energy  to  be- 
come proficient  in  their  profession,  and  are  regarded 
as  useful  in  it  by  the  public,  there  is  little  time  left 
to  them  for  relaxation,  and  they  have  very  little  rest 
during  their  waking  hours.  They  cannot  feel  like 
most  laboring  men  whose  work  is  almost  entirely 
physical,  that  after  eight  to  ten  hours  labor  a  day, 
that  they  are  free  from  cares  until  the  next  day. 

In  proportion  to  numbers  there  are  more  cases  of 
self-destruction  and  deaths  from  heart-failure  among 
professional  and  business  men  whose  overworked 
brains  and  high-tensioned  nervous  systems  have 
given  way  under  the  strains  imposed  upon  them, 
than  among  men  whose  lives  are  devoted  to  physical 
labor.  These  professional  men  are  obliged  to  work 
in  competition  with  each  other  the  same  as  in  un- 
skilled labor,  and  their  professional  services  are  in 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  207 

demand  and  earn  them  good  or  poor  livings  in  pro- 
portion to  their  efficiency  and  energy  in  fulfilling 
the  requirements  of  their  profession.  Every  one  who 
amounts  to  anything  in  the  world,  must  enlist  in  the 
army  of  mental  or  physical  workers,  and  there  is 
no  good  reason  why  any  one  of  the  professions  or 
occupations  should  claim  all  the  honor  of  being  the 
only  laboring  body,  and  on  that  account  claim  special 
privileges  and  immunities  by  legislation  or  in  any 
other  respect.  All  men  of  the  different  professions 
and  occupations,  sell  their  services  or  labor,  and 
they  buy  and  sell  to  each  other,  and  in  the  general 
economy  of  social  life,  one  profession  or  occupation 
is  about  as  useful  as  another.  There  are  many  who 
think  that  the  professional  or  business  man's  task 
is  never  done. 

There  is  a  constant  exchange  of  services  between 
men  of  the  different  professions  and  occupations, 
and  a  noting  of  debits  and  credits.  We  have  the  un- 
skilled laborer  calling  up  the  'physician  to  attend 
his  sick  wife  or  child,  and  the  physician  wishes  the 
laborer  to  attend  his  garden,  or  haul  his  fuel  or  per- 
form some  other  service  for  him  in  exchange  for 
professional  services.  And  so  we  might  multiply 
instances  through  all  the  professional  and  business 
channels  of  life.  If  the  laborer  is  provident  and  the 
physician  is  improvident,  he  may  in  a  few  years 
have  more  of  the  comforts  of  life  than  the  physician. 
A  colored  woman  in  Carthage,  an  ex-slave,  made  a 
good  living  by  taking  in  washing,  washing  by  hand, 
owned  and  lived  in  a  good  house,  and  owned  three 


208  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

or  four  good  houses  which  she  had  built  or  bought 
by  washing,  from  the  rent  of  which  she  derived  a 
handsome  income,  and  yet  she  did  not  stop  washing, 
or  complain  of  grinding  toil  and  that  her  lot  was  a 
hard  one.  On  the  contrary  she  always  had  a  pleas- 
ant expression  as  if  she  felt  that  life  was  worth  liv- 
ing. A  few  years  after  the  Civil  War  the  quarter- 
master general  of  the  army  had  a  salary  of  about 
six  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  he  had  a  messenger 
who  had  a  wife  and  several  children  to  provide  for, 
and  who  had  been  with  him  many  years  at  a  salary 
of  six  hundred  dollars  a  year,  and  yet  he  was  finan- 
cially better  off  than  his  superior  officer. 

There  is  in  the  individual  organism  as  in  the  social 
organism,  a  constant  exchange  of  service  for  service 
between  the  different  parts,  and  the  plan  of  life  of 
the  social  organism  is  built  upon  the  plan  of  life  of 
the  individual  organism.  The  brain  presides  over 
and  co-ordinates  all  the  parts  of  the  individual  or- 
ganism in  securing  food ;  the  hands  to  seize  the  food 
and  convey  it  to  the  mouth ;  the  jaws  and  teeth  and 
tongue  and  saliva  to  break  down  the  food  and  pre- 
pare it  for  passage  through  the  alimentary  canal  to 
the  stomach :  the  stomach  to  put  it  through  the  chem- 
ical process  of  chylefication  and  digestion,  or  forma- 
tion of  blood;  the  lungs  to  aerate  the  blood  from 
the  stomach  in  its  passage  to  the  heart  where  it  is 
divided  into  venous  and  arterial,  and  where  it  is 
as  a  coin  paid  back  to  each  of  the  other  parts  that 
expended  energy  in  producing  it.  If  each  of  the 
other  parts  does  not  receive  the  amount  of  pure 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  209 

blood  required  to  enable  it  to  fulfill  its  proper  func- 
tion, there  will  be  disturbance  among  all  the  other 
parts  in  fulfilling  their  proper  functions.  Idleness 
of  any  of  the  parts,  preventing  any  of  them  from 
fulfilling  its  normal  function,  causes  more  or  less  dis- 
turbance in  all  the  other  parts,  as  tying  up  and  ceas- 
ing to  use  the  hand  or  foot,  or  constantly  shading 
the  eyes,  weakens  these  parts  because  they  then 
cease  receiving  their  normal  amounts  of  blood. 
When  each  part  receives  the  required  amount  of 
blood  and  performs  the  normal  amount  of  function, 
the  whole  organism  is  healthy.  How  senseless  then 
it  would  be  for  one  part  to  wish  to  destroy  another 
part,  thus  crippling  and  lowering  the  efficiency  of 
the  entire  organism.  But  each  part  may  demand  for 
the  health  of  the  organism,  that  it  shall  receive  the 
amount  of  nourishment  due  to  it  to  enable  it  to  ful- 
fill its  proper  function,  for  an  organ  or  part  like  the 
blacksmith's  arm  grows  and  strengthens  from  use, 
while  another  arm  dwindles  and  weakens  from  dis- 
use. There  must  be  independence  and  freedom  and 
cooperation  of  all  parts  in  contributing  to  the 
production  of  the  general  supply  of  nourishment 
for  the  health  and  strength  of  the  organism,  for  any 
restraint  placed  on  one  part  affects  more  or  less 
all  other  parts.  We  thus  see  that  there  is  an  almost 
complete  analogy  between  the  developed  social  or- 
ganism and  the  developed  individual  organism ;  that 
in  one  case  as  in  the  other,  an  injury  to  one  part 
injuriously  affects  all  other  parts,  and  that  an  im- 
proper restraint  put  on  one  part,  restrains  all  other 


210  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

parts.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  drones  who  are 
found  in  every  hive,  all  the  people  of  this  country 
are  workers,  and  helpful  to  each  other  in  the  struggle 
for  life.  As  our  constitution  and  the  laws  are  made, 
as  far  as  human  intelligence  can  make  them,  for 
the  protection  of  all  alike  to  life,  liberty  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness,  there  is  no  need  of  a  union 
to  demand  special  privileges  and  exemptions  from 
responsibility  for  their  acts  for  a  particular  class 
to  the  injury  of  all  other  classes.  It  is  an  intolerable 
situation  for  the  major  part  of  the  community  to 
be  constantly  kept  in  a  defensive  attitude  by  the 
quarrelsome  and  belligerent  attitude  of  a  small  fac- 
tion, which  derives  its  power  from  thorough  organ- 
ization, and  whose  leaders  manipulate  it  for  selfish 
ends. 

If  the  unskilled  workman  was  the  only  person 
who  was  obliged  to  sell  his  labor  to  earn  a  living,  he 
would  certainly  be  entitled  to  a  large  share  of  our 
sympathy;  but  when  we  see  that  all  classes  of  men, 
from  those  holding  the  highest  to  the  lowest  posi- 
tions, are  endeavoring  to  provide  comforts  and 
happiness  for  themselves  and  families,  and  are 
obliged  to  sell  their  labor  for  what  they  can  get  for 
it,  and  to  buy  other  labor,  or  its  equivalent  for 
what  they  can  get  it  for,  we  are  reminded  that  we 
are  not  warranted  in  extending  our  sympathy  to 
one  class  more  than  to  another.  And  when  we  ap- 
preciate the  close  interdependence  between  the  differ- 
ent professions,  occupations  and  business,  it  is  cer- 
tainly remarkable  that  any  one  of  these  when  organ- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  211 

ized  into  a  union,  should  be  continually  working 
itself  into  such  a  state  of  frenzy  and  hate  as  to 
wish  to  cripple  or  destroy  any  of  the  others,  and 
by  reaction  all  the  others,  because  they  oppose  its 
selfishness  in  taking  from  others  the  right  to  work 
and  support  themselves.  To  the  minds  of  thinking 
men  it  will  appear  that  the  officials  of  the  unions 
could  not  employ  their  time  and  energy  to  a  better 
purpose  than  earnestly  pointing  out  to  the  members 
that  they  are  a  part  of  the  social  organism,  and  that 
they  cannot  injure  any  other  part  of  that  organ- 
ism without  injuring  themselves.  That  the  profes- 
sional disturber  and  trouble-breeder  may  always 
find  in  the  lower  strata  of  social  life,  conditions, 
which,  when  presented  in  a  strong  one-sided  light, 
to  the  thoughtless  and  feeble  minded,  will  arouse 
sympathy  and  indignation,  is  perfectly  true.  We 
shall  always  have  with  us  a  large  enough  proportion 
of  weak-minded  and  vicious  men  and  women  who  are 
not  public  charges,  but  near  that  mental  condition 
requiring  the  saner  part  of  the  public  to  look  after 
them,  and  who,  in  the  general  struggle  for  life,  are 
crowded  out  into  the  region  of  short  grazing,  into 
the  region  of  human  activities  where  they  are  barely 
able  to  glean  enough  of  the  necessities  of  life  to 
keep  soul  and  body  together.  Were  it  not  for  the 
altruism  that  exists  in  the  provident  classes,  the 
classes  that  save  more  than  they  use,  these  unfor- 
tunate people  would  go  the  way  of  all  incompetents 
in  a  state  of  nature.  How  far  the  altruism  of  those 
who  are  able  to  take  care  of  themselves  should  be 


212  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

drawn  on  to  support  those  who  are  unable  to  stand 
alone,  is  a  question  we  shall  not  undertake  to  deter- 
mine. These  incompetents  are  allowed  to  multiply 
in  the  cities  and  in  the  rural  population  of  the  coun- 
try, and  on  account  of  their  mental  feebleness,  are 
forced  into  the  most  unwholesome  and  unsanitary 
situations  imaginable,  situations  of  squalor,  poverty 
and  filth,  which  have  only  to  be  seen  by  men  and 
women  of  average  intelligence,  to  arouse  in  them 
the  most  active  sympathy.  These  wrecks  of  the 
human  race  strewn  along  the  byways  of  life,  cannot 
be  made  very  useful  to  any  active  business,  and 
when  employed  at  all,  are  always  paid  the  minimum 
of  wages,  enough  to  provide  barely  the  necessities 
of  life.  We  should  not  permit  them  to  be  preyed 
upon  by  the  selfish  masters.  These  incompetents, 
and  feeble-minded,  are  of  every  shade  of  mental 
strength  from  those  who  are  public  charges,  up  to 
the  man  who  will  suffer  death  rather  than  surrender 
his  independence  and  freedom  to  an  organization 
made  up  largely  of  feeble-minded  and  vicious.  So 
notoriously  is  it  true  that  the  feeble-minded  and 
vicious  have  been  used  by  demagogue  union  officials 
to  control  the  competent,  that  there  are  brotherhoods 
who  have  insisted  on  the  cleavage  and  will  not  asso- 
ciate themselves  with  the  national  federation  of 
labor.  A  rattle-brained  socialist  will  get  up  on  a 
street  corner  and  attracting  a  crowd  around  him, 
point  to  the  home  and  surroundings  of  some  well-to- 
do  man,  and  then  to  the  filthy,  poverty-stricken  habi- 
tations of  the  incompetent  and  feeble-minded,  and 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  213 

then  draw  the  conclusion  that  the  country  is  going 
to  ruin  because  the  rich  are  getting  richer  and  the 
poor  are  getting  poorer.  His  loose  incoherent  talk 
is  applauded  by  some  of  his  unthinking,  feeble- 
minded audience,  and  he  may  make  a  few  converts 
to  socialism  who  are  ready  to  raise  the  red  flag  and 
begin  the  dividing  up.  He  has  his  cheap  tracts  ex- 
pressing his  incoherent  thoughts,  the  thoughts  of  a 
loquacious  weak-minded  person,  to  distribute  among 
those  who  will  take  them,  and  there  is  no  one  at  hand 
to  correct  his  false  and  shallow  teachings.  All  social- 
ists are  friends  and  allies  of  the  unions,  and  many  of 
them  are  members  of  the  organization,  and  in  times 
of  labor  disturbances,  the  labor  leaders  find  them 
valuable  allies  and  sources  of  strength  from  whom 
they  may  draw  recruits  for  almost  any  kind  of  un- 
lawful acts.  Of  course  we  know  that  socialism  and 
unionism  stand  for  practically  opposite  ideals  of 
life ;  that  socialism  stands  for  a  division  of  property 
without  regard  to  the  merits  of  individuals,  and  that 
unionism  stands  for  special  privileges  and  benefits 
of  a  class  at  the  expense  of  all  other  members  of 
the  community.  All  these  incongruous  elements,  no 
matter  how  much  of  a  nuisance  they  may  be  to  the 
saner  part  of  society,  must  be  tolerated  in  an  evolv- 
ing social  aggregate  as  a  part  of  the  waste  and 
wreckage  of  our  race.  But  with  our  knowledge  of 
the  prevention  of  and  immunity  from  disease,  we 
believe  it  is  possible  to  lessen  and  better  control 
this  waste  and  wreckage,  but  not  entirely  cure  it. 
There  is  failure,  waste  and  wreckage  in  all  the  races 


214  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

of  the  animal  world,  so  great  indeed  that  only  the 
strong  and  healthy  and  best  arrive  at  maturity  and 
old  age,  the  elimination  of  the  unfit  and  incompe- 
tent being  considered  beneficial  to  each  race.  Of 
a  million  ova  spawned  by  a  cod  only  one  may  be  left 
to  reach  the  reproductive  age,  the  others  being  de- 
stroyed by  enemies  in  the  environment. 

Nearly  every  employer  of  labor,  after  his  em- 
ployees have  finished  their  day's  work  of  eight  to  ten 
hours,  and  return  to  their  homes  free  from  cares 
until  another  day,  takes  home  with  him  the  cares 
of  his  business,  which  he  is  often  unable  to  dismiss 
from  his  mind  until  the  small  hours  of  the  morning, 
having  expended  much  gray  matter  and  nervous 
energy  in  endeavoring  to  determine  whether  his  bus- 
iness is  taking  him  towards  bankruptcy,  or  towards 
a  condition  that  will  give  him  reasonable  profits  on 
his  investment,  and  permanent  employment  for  his 
people.  He  knows  that  he  must  have  cash  customers 
to  take  the  product  he  is  turning  out  to  enable  him  to 
meet  the  payroll  of  his  employees  at  the  end  of  the 
week,  and  to  meet  bills  for  raw  material,  motive 
power  and  incidental  expenditures  necessary  in  run- 
ning his  plant ;  and  he  knows  he  must  buy  raw  ma- 
terial at  such  a  price  as  to  enable  him  to  turn  out  the 
finished  product  from  it  at  such  profit  that  he  can  pay 
the  running  expenses  of  his  plant,  and  still  leave  a 
net  income,  small  or  large.  If  the  expenses  and  losses 
of  running  his  plant  exceed  the  income  from  all 
sources,  leaving  no  net  income,  he  knows  it  is  only 
a  question  of  time  when  he  must  close  down.  Think 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  215 

of  such  a  man  whose  efforts  and  calculations  and 
foresight  are  as  much  in  the  interest  of  his  employees 
as  in  his  own  interest,  having  his  employees  turn 
traitor  to  him  and  endeavor  to  destroy  his  business 
and  property  at  the  instigation  of  an  union  organ- 
izer, because  the  employer  insists  on  having  some- 
thing to  say  in  regard  to  the  manner  of  running 
his  business.  Think  of  an  outsider,  an  alien,  who 
ignores  any  interest  in  the  common  welfare;  whose 
business  is  to  throw  poor  men  out  of  employment; 
who  lives  by  stirring  up  strife  between  men  who 
should  be  friends;  who  is  always  endeavoring  to 
fasten  himself  on  some  body  of  men  to  absorb  their 
life-giving  substance  like  many  other  parasites  that 
fasten  themselves  on  animals  to  absorb  their  life- 
giving  substance, — we  say  think  of  such  an  outsider 
seeking  out  the  employees  of  a  plant  to  whisper  lies 
and  discontent  into  their  ears  to  turn  them  against 
their  employer  and  benefactor  with  evil  intentions 
of  destroying  his  property  because  he  does  not  com- 
ply with  the  demands  put  into  their  mouths  by  the 
agent  of  the  league  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness, 
to  surrender  the  control  of  his  business  to  him. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
THE  WASTE  OF  UNIONISM. 

It  has  been  stated  by  those  who  have  amassed  con- 
siderable fortunes,  that  their  fortunes  were  built 
up  by  taking  as  their  part  of  the  profits,  the  by-prod- 
ucts, or  waste,  from  the  product  of  the  plant  they 
operated.  Prior  to  the  Civil  War  the  cotton  seed 
ginned  out  of  the  cotton  for  the  fibre  on  the  planta- 
tions of  the  planters  in  the  South  were  left  at  the 
gin  to  rot  except  what  was  needed  for  seed  the 
next  season.  But  now,  thanks  to  the  expanding 
knowledge  of  men  in  every  department  of  thought, 
this  by-product,  the  cotton  seed,  is  found  to  be 
scarcely  less  valuable  in  fulfilling  the  wants  of  men, 
than  the  fibre  of  the  cotton  plant.  Many  millions 
of  dollars  have  been  expended  in  erecting  cotton 
seed  oil  mills  in  the  South,  and  these  mills  have 
turned  out  millions  of  barrels  of  cotton  seed  oil  every 
year,  and  millions  of  pounds  of  cotton  seed  oil  cake 
or  meal,  a  by-product  of  the  seed.  The  oil  is  used 
extensively  in  the  domestic  economy  of  the  house- 
hold, and  the  cake  or  meal  is  shipped  in  car  loads 
all  over  the  country  to  mix  with  other  feed  for  stock. 
In  those  days  when  the  planter  allowed  his  cotton 
seed  to  go  to  waste  and  rot,  he  did  not  know  that  he 
was  allowing  half  of  his  cotton  crop  to  go  to  waste. 

216 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  217 

In  the  early  days  of  lead  mining  in  Southwest 
Missouri,  the  mine  owners  threw  out  as  waste  what 
was  known  as  "  Jack,"  a  by-product  of  lead  min- 
ing, which  has  become  as  much  sought  for  as  lead 
and  is  now  the  leading  industry  of  that  section.  The 
smoke  from  the  smelter  of  lead  or  zinc  ore  by  a 
process  of  recent  discovery,  is  turned  into  white  lead 
of  a  fine  quality.  There  is  an  increasing  demand  for 
zinc,  which  in  the  crude  state  is  jack,  all  over  the 
world.  In  the  recent  great  development  of  electrical 
power,  from  wireless  telegraphy  or  telephony,  down 
to  the  electric  door-bell,  the  zinc  or  jack  of  the 
miner,  is  an  important  factor,  and  yet  it  was  only 
recently  a  waste  or  by-product  of  the  mines.  The 
co-ordination  of  the  movements  of  the  machinery  for 
lifting,  sighting  and  firing  the  great  guns  of  the 
monster  battleships  of  the  world,  is  all  done  by 
electrical  power. 

In  the  packing  house  plants  of  this  country,  the 
by-products,  or  what  was  formerly  waste,  are  im- 
portant factors  in  contributing  to  the  profits  of  each 
concern.  We  are  told  by  packers  that  practically 
no  part  of  the  slaughtered  animal  is  wasted,  but  that 
every  part  is  turned  into  a  useful  article  of  com- 
merce, as  the  hair  for  plastering  and  upholstering; 
the  hides  for  leather  to  be  used  in  many  forms ;  the 
bones  and  excreta  for  commercial  fertilizer.  Even 
the  despised  clinker  or  cinder,  the  by-product  or 
waste  of  coal  burned  in  the  furnace,  is  saved  by 
large  establishments  and  has  a  commercial  value 
for  use  in  making  granatoid  walks  and  basement 


218  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

floors.  On  every  hand  we  see  that  those  who  have 
built  up  fortunes  from  small  beginnings,  or  who 
have  accumulated  a  competence  for  the  declining 
years  of  their  lives  that  they  might  not  be  a  burden 
to  their  friends  or  society,  have  saved  the  by-prod- 
ucts or  waste  and  turned  them  into  some  useful  pur- 
pose. These  are  the  men  that  those  who  control 
the  principles  and  policies  of  the  wasteful  unions 
despise  with  so  much  vehemence,  and  would  destroy 
or  cripple  in  every  possible  manner,  if  they  refuse 
to  bow  to  the  teachings  of  waste,  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness  of  the  masters.  All  the  examples  of  provi- 
dence exhibited  by  the  men  accounted  well-to-do, 
fail  to  make  an  impression  on  those  whose  lives  are 
guided  by  the  teachings  of  the  masters,  and  which 
lead  them  to  feast  while  they  have  plenty,  and  de- 
stroy what  they  can  not  use ;  to  go  without  food  and 
shelter  to-morrow,  and  to  curse  the  provident  man 
who  has  home  and  comforts  by  saving  what  they 
had  wasted.  A  friend  asked  a  union  leader  why 
he  always  took  two  matches  to  light  a  cigar,  and  he 
replied  that  he  had  thought  about  it  that  the  more 
matches  he  used  the  more  work  it  would  make  for 
union  labor — the  more  beer  he  drank  the  more  work 
it  would  make  for  brewery  employees.  This  idea  of 
waste,  of  wasting  as  much  as  one  uses,  appears  to 
run  all  through  the  conduct  of  the  members  of  the 
unions.  Almost  every  member  seems  to  think  that 
the  more  cigars  he  smokes  over  the  number  he  could 
get  along  with,  helps  the  union  cigar  maker  that 
much,  and  that  if  every  cigar  smoker  would  observe 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  219 

that  generous  principle,  a  greater  number  of  union 
cigar  makers  would  be  employed,  or  the  same  num- 
ber at  increased  wages.  The  greater  number  of  cars 
switchmen  can  break  up  or  have  sent  to  the  repair 
shops  by  indifferent  and  careless  switching,  and  the 
greater  number  of  cars  broken  up  by  wrecks  on  the 
roads,  are  all  accounted  blessings  in  disguise,  for  they 
all  make  more  work  for  union  labor  in  the  car  shops. 
And  so  we  find  it  in  every  department  of  industry 
where  union  labor  is  employed.  We  heard  of  an 
enthusiastic  unionist  who  thought  that  the  destruc- 
tion of  San  Francisco  by  fire,  following  the  earth- 
quake, was  a  good  thing,  because  it  would  give  em- 
ployment to  thousands  of.  union  laboring  men  in  re- 
building the  city,  for  having  control  of  the  city  ad- 
ministration they  could  prevent  competition  of  in- 
dependent labor,  and  discourage  and  keep  out  union 
labor  from  other  parts  of  the  country,  and  thus  raise 
the  rate  of  wages  to  almost  any  point  desired.  Carry- 
ing out  this  method  of  union  reasoning,  why,  if  it 
is  a  good  thing  that  one  great  city  should  be  provi- 
dentially destroyed  by  earthquake  and  fire  in  the  in- 
terest of  union  labor,  would  it  not  be  a  better  thing 
for  the  unions  that  all  the  great  cities  of  the  coun- 
try should  be  so  destroyed?  If  all  the  great  cities 
should  not  be  destroyed  according  to  union  philos- 
ophy, how  many  should  be  so  destroyed  to  satisfy 
the  demands  of  that  philosophy?  At  what  point 
would  it  intercede  with  Providence  to  stay  destruc- 
tion of  life  and  property?  There  is  nothing  in  the 
philosophy,  reasoning  or  conduct  of  those  who  con- 


220  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

trol  and  direct  the  principles  and  policies  of  the 
unions  to  indicate  that  they  regard  the  wealth  of 
the  country  as  consisting  of  its  property  in  the  high- 
est state  of  development  and  usefulness;  nothing 
to  indicate  that  they  regard  the  destruction  of  prop- 
erty by  accident  or  otherwise,  as  destruction  of 
wealth,  and  nothing  to  indicate  that  they  recog- 
nize that  the  poorer  the  country  in  material  re- 
sources, the  less  able  it  would  be  to  employ  labor  at 
fair  wages.  This  false  conception  of  the  unions  that 
the  waste  and  destruction  of  property  are  a  good 
thing  because  it  will  likely  give  employment  to  labor 
in  replacing  the  property  wasted  or  destroyed,  has 
been  as  injurious  to  the  unions  as  to  those  upon 
whom  the  losses  have  fallen,  for  every  careful  thinker 
knows  that  one  part  of  the  social  organism  can  not 
be  injuriously  affected  without  injuriously  affecting 
all  other  parts. 

It  is  a  rather  strange  anomaly  that  those  who 
could  best  stand  a  little  waste  in  the  economies  of 
life,  are  the  ones  who  are  most  persistently  guarding 
against  it,  while  those  who  are  least  able  to  stand 
such  waste  in  the  economies  of  life,  are  the  ones 
who  most  persistently  insist  by  their  actions,  that 
waste  is  a  good  thing.  There  is  waste  and  repair 
going  on  in  our  bodies  all  the  time,  and  there  is 
waste  and  repair  going  on  in  the  use  of  property  all 
the  time  during  the  life  of  the  property,  but  to 
wantonly  accelerate  such  waste  beyond  its  natural 
rate,  is  the  greatest  folly.  Those  possessed  of  the 
false  conception  that  the  waste  or  destruction  of 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  221 

property  is  a  good  thing,  are  not  likely  to  handle 
the  property  interests  of  their  employer  in  such  man- 
ner as  to  make  it  profitable  to  him.  Indeed  we  could 
hardly  expect  a  member  of  the  union  to  conscien- 
tiously look  after  the  interests  of  his  employer,  when 
it  has  for  years  been  impressed  upon  his  mind  by 
those  who  control  and  direct  its  principles  and 
policies  that  there  is  a  natural  enmity  between  em- 
ployer and  employee,  an  enmity  that  makes  the  em- 
ployee more  ready  to  injure  than  to  conscientiously 
serve  him.  An  independent  worker  relies  on  the 
merits  of  his  work  and  his  loyalty  to  the  interests 
of  his  employer,  a  loyalty  that  would  not  see  his 
property  wantonly  wasted  or  destroyed,  to  commend 
him  in  securing  employment  and  in  keeping  him  em- 
ployed, whereas  the  union  worker  relies  on  his  union 
card  to  hold  him  to  his  job,  and  cares  nothing  about 
the  merits  of  his  work  so  that  it  is  accepted,  and 
rather  hopes  that  some  defect  has  been  covered  up 
in  order  soon  to  give  the  union  more  work.  When 
men  once  surrender  their  independence  and  freedom, 
as  they  do  in  joining  the  unions,  there  is  scarcely  any 
limit  to  the  absurdities  to  which  they  may  be  led 
by  the  masters  whose  interest  it  is  to  keep  them  de- 
pendent. Idleness  is  the  thief  of  time,  and  the  loss 
of  time  is  the  loss  of  money  or  comforts,  and  yet 
those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and  pol- 
icies of  the  unions,  deliberately  bring  upon  the  mem- 
bers a  loss  of  time,  a  loss  of  wages  in  strikes  which 
amounts  to  about  twenty  million  dollars  a  year,  be- 
sides a  loss  to  employers  and  to  the  public  many 


222  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

times  greater  than  the  losses  to  organized  labor,  some 
estimates  placing  the  losses  as  high  as  two  hundred 
million  dollars  a  year.  Even  if  they  felt  no  concern 
for  the  great  losses  to  employers  and  to  the  public, 
one  would  naturally  think  that  the  enormous  losses 
to  organized  labor  by  strikes  and  industrial  wars, 
would  arouse  some  of  its  leaders,  or  some  of  its  work- 
ing members,  to  inquire  whether  there  is  not  some- 
thing wrong  in  the  head  or  somewhere,  some  terrible 
mismanagement,  which,  year  after  year,  brings  upon 
the  organization  such  great  losses,  such  waste  of 
energy.  Every  thinking  man  who  looks  over  the  sit- 
uation, must  ask  himself  whether  there  is  not  enough 
independence  and  freedom  in  the  organization  to 
allow  some  of  its  members  to  rise  up  and  demand  a 
change  in  the  management  which  can  show  no  better 
results  for  the  confidence,  money  and  power  put  into 
its  hands.  If  there  is  any  independence  and  free- 
dom in  the  unions,  one  would  naturally  look  for  some 
member  to  ask  in  open  meetings  whether  or  not  the 
great  losses  the  organization  annually  entails  upon 
employers  and  the  public,  do  not  lessen  their  ability 
to  employ  wage  earners  in  proportion  to  their  losses  ? 
One  looks  in  vain  for  a  gleam  of  light  or  sanity  to 
break  in  upon  some  member  of  the  unions,  when 
such  important  questions,  questions  that  will  not 
down  with  the  thoughtful,  press  for  consideration. 
The  fact  is  the  masters  are  the  union,  and  the  mem- 
bers only  dummies.  In  any  other  business  than  the 
unions,  a  management  that  brought  nothing  but  con- 
stant losses  to  those  interested  in  the  enterprise, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  223 

losses  always  outbalancing  the  benefits,  would  cer- 
tainly be  ousted  if  bankruptcy  would  be  guarded 
against,  and  new  officials  put  in  charge.  It  would 
be  encouraging  to  see  some  independence  and  free- 
dom in  the  organization,  some  disposition  of  the 
members  to  break  the  hypnotic  power  of  their 
leaders,  to  throw  off  the  spell  of  suggestion  which 
has  held  them  in  bondage  so  long,  and  to  demand 
more  freedom  and  light  and  more  peace  and  com- 
forts, and  less  waste  of  energy  and  opportunity,  and 
less  waste  of  material  things. 

Almost  daily  comes  a  story  over  the  wires  of  some 
industry  which  had  for  years  been  employing  hun- 
dreds or  even  thousands  of  men  peaceably  and  satis- 
factorily to  both  parties,  then  suddenly  a  union  or- 
ganizer appears  among  them  and  in  a  few  days  or- 
ganizes a  local  union.  He  then  formulates  a  set  of 
grievances,  crams  them  down  the  throats  of  his  new 
converts,  and  takes  them  to  the  management  and 
informs  it  that  if  his  demands  are  not  complied  with 
at  once  he  will  order  all  the  employees  out  on  a  strike 
and  picket  the  plant  to  prevent  the  employment  of 
independent  workers.  Of  course  these  demands  and 
threats  mean  that  if  the  management  does  not  imme- 
diately comply  with  them,  that  a  state  of  turbulence, 
riot  and  bloodshed  will  be  at  once  inaugurated. 
Hitherto  a  grievance  of  any  of  the  employees  laid 
before  the  management  was  speedily  attended  to 
and  adjusted  satisfactorily  to  both  parties ;  but  now 
since  the  employees  have  sold  their  birthrights  for 
a  mess  of  pottage  and  joined  the  union,  the  organ- 


224  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

izer  easily  finds  grievances  for  them,  which  must  be 
redressed  at  once  by  a  humiliating  yielding  of  the 
management,  or  the  men  will  be  ordered  out  on 
strike.  In  order  to  have  a  good  standing  with  the 
executive  committee  of  the  federation,  the  organ- 
izer must  show  that  his  work  has  been  productive  of 
results.  We  find  that  in  a  short  time  after  he  gets 
to  work,  the  tone  of  confidence  and  good  feeling 
that  existed  between  the  management  and  the  em- 
ployees, has  been  undermined  and  destroyed,  and 
the  employees  instead  of  looking  upon  the  manage- 
ment as  their  trusted  friend,  now  look  upon  it  as 
their  enemy  with  whom  it  is  their  duty  to  be  at  war, 
and  whom  they  should  not  hesitate  to  injure  if  it 
does  not  at  once  comply  with  demands  which  they 
would  never  have  thought  of  making  before  the 
organizer  came  among  them. 

We  loathe  the  man  who  under  the  guise  of  friend- 
ship insinuates  himself  into  the  confidence  of  the 
husband  for  the  purpose  of  undermining  the  loyalty 
of  his  wife  and  breaking  up  the  family  relations; 
but  such  dastardly  conduct  should  not  be  more 
severely  reprobated  than  the  conduct  of  the  union 
organizer  who  goes  among  the  employees  of  a  plant, 
with  his  tale  of  woe  and  lies  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
stroying the  good  relations  that  exist  between  them 
and  their  employer,  and  to  weaken  their  loyalty  to 
his  interests.  If  the  organizer  could  show  that  his 
insinuating  interference  was  for  the  purpose  of  en- 
larging the  independence  and  freedom  of  the  men, 
instead  of  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  their  inde- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  225 

pendence  and  freedom,  and  if  he  could  also  show 
that  his  interference  was  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
them  with  certainty  more  remunerative  employment, 
instead  of  making  their  employment  and  incomes 
more  doubtful,  there  might  be  rational  excuse  for 
his  conduct.  His  conduct  in  playing  upon  the  pas- 
sions and  prejudices  of  the  men  to  get  them  to  sur- 
render their  independence  and  freedom,  and  their 
means  of  earning  a  living  for  their  families,  the  loss 
of  wages,  shows  how  heartless  and  unsympathetic 
the  officials  are  in  dealing  with  those  over  whom  they 
secure  control,  and  upon  whom  they  bring  such 
great  losses.  In  this  country  where  there  is  so  much 
altruism  on  every  hand;  where  so  many  men  have 
made  fortunes  out  of  the  waste  of  the  unions  and 
returned  it  to  them  in  educational  facilities  and 
esthetic  art,  and  where  there  is  so  much  kindliness 
of  feeling  and  brotherly  love  of  man  for  man,  it  is 
truly  painful  to  always  find  in  unionism  a  discordant 
note,  an  unbounded  selfishness  that  knows  nothing 
of  generosity,  and  a  dire  pessimism  that  sees  no  good 
or  beauty  in  anything  outside  the  narrow  confines  of 
a  league  founded  and  maintained  upon  principles 
of  selfishness  and  coercion.  It  seems  strange  that 
some  man  within  the  ranks  of  the  organization  does 
not  preach  cheerfulness  and  respect  for  the  rights 
of  others,  and  urge  it  to  throw  off  its  pessimism  and 
join  in  cooperation  in  promoting  the  general  welfare, 
good  feeling  and  mutual  confidence  between  all 
classes  of  our  national  family,  instead  of  wasting  its 
energies  in  promoting  strife  and  distrust  of  men  for 
each  other.  We  should  all  recognize  that  in  an  ideal 


226  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

social  state  there  can  be  no  strife  between  men;  no 
mutual  distrust,  no  waste  of  the  energies  or  product 
of  the  energies,  and  no  desire  for  men  to  infringe 
each  others  equal  rights,  equal  freedom. 

While  there  is  scarcely  any  one  able  to  live  up  to 
the  highest  ideals  of  developed  ethics,  we  should 
each  firmly  determine  to  live  up  to  them  as  far  as 
practicable. 

Now  if  those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions,  have  made  them  a  league 
of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness,  and  a  system  of  union 
slavery,  in  which  the  members  lose  the  sense  of  indi- 
vidual responsibility,  it  is  easy  to  see  why  waste  is  so 
prevalent  with  them,  why  they  use  two  matches 
where  one  would  answer  the  purpose,  up  to  consum- 
ing eight  hours  in  laying  eight  hundred  to  a  thousand 
bricks  when  that  number  is  laid  by  the  independent 
brick  layer  in  less  than  four  hours. 

We  are  too  wasteful  as  a  nation  of  our  natural  re- 
sources and  in  the  economy  of  the  family,  and  think- 
ing men  are  beginning  to  wake  up  to  the  importance 
of  conserving  these  resources,  and  of  urging  greater 
economy  in  the  family.  But  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  seem  to  have  no  thought  of  conserving  any- 
thing useful,  for  their  motto  appears  to  be  "waste  all 
you  can  not  use  to-day,  and  to-morrow  will  take  care 
of  itself."  They  have  certainly  done  nothing  to  con- 
serve the  energies  of  the  members  of  their  organ- 
ization and  apply  them  to  useful  purposes,  but  on 
the  contrary  have  been  utterly  reckless  in  wasting 
and  dissipating  these  energies,  which  should  have 
been  a  sacred  trust  in  their  keeping. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
THEY  LOSE  WHEN  THEY  WIN. 

All  wars  are  costly  to  both  sides,  industrial  wars 
as  well  as  others,  and  any  war  may  be  more  costly 
to  the  victor  than  to  the  defeated.  Again  the  de- 
feated party  may  be  more  benefited  by  its  defeat, 
than  the  victorious  party  by  its  success.  Most  of 
the  wars  in  recent  times  have  been  for  the  purpose 
of  settling  questions  in  dispute  between  nations,  and 
the  point  in  dispute  that  any  war  has  settled  in 
favor  of  the  victor,  may  have  been  worth  the  cost 
and  it  may  not.  If  the  point  gained  by  the  victor  has 
not  been  in  favor  of  an  extension  of  human  rights, 
for  greater  freedom  of  the  individual  consistent  with 
the  like  freedom  of  all,  it  has  not  been  worth  the 
cost,  no  matter  how  much  glory  it  may  have  brought 
its  victors.  We  have  largely  passed  that  phase  of 
moral  and  intellectual  development  when  the  return 
home  of  victorious  legions  with  the  trophies  and 
spoils  of  successful  war,  largely  of  women  and  chil- 
dren of  alien  peoples  for  slaves,  should  win  our  ap- 
plause. We  are  living  in  more  humane  and  altruistic 
times  in  which  there  is  an  increasing  demand  for  our 
efforts  to  assist  those,  who,  from  any  cause,  are  more 
unfortunate  than  ourselves,  to  help  them  to  help 
themselves,  not  by  giving  them  bread,  but  knowl- 

223 


228  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

edge  and  freedom,  and  the  warm  hand  of  good  will 
and  fellowship.  When  men  become  jealous  of  and 
insistent  for  their  own  rights,  and  no  more,  they 
will  become  jealous  of  and  insistent  for  the  equal 
rights  of  all  others.  After  a  long  or  short  strike, 
the  members  of  a  union  may  win,  may  coerce  the  em- 
ployer to  yield  to  their  demands,  but  they  do  not  win 
back  the  lost  time  and  the  wages  they  would  have 
had  if  they  had  continued  to  work;  besides  losing 
their  individuality  and  industrial  freedom  by  mak- 
ing themselves  the  willing  slaves  of  masters  who  have 
no  other  than  a  selfish  interest  in  them.  While  they 
were  out  they  were  all  the  time  losing  life-giving 
necessities  which  they  might  have  had  if  they  had 
not  listened  to  the  masters  who  manifest  no  interest 
in  common  with  them,  and  who  fatten  on  their  losses. 
The  fact  that  they  won  in  the  fight  is  no  more  evi- 
dence that  they  were  right  in  their  demands,  than 
that  the  defeated  party  was  in  the  wrong  when  the 
trial  was  by  battle  or  personal  conflict,  as  it  was  in 
the  courts  of  chivalry  a  few  centuries  ago.  When 
men  win  by  their  combined  strength,  as  they  do  in 
the  mob  combinations  of  the  unions,  and  not  by 
justice,  they  are  certain  to  lose  in  the  long  run. 
The  masters  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions,  who  have  been  suc- 
cessful in  a  strike,  like  the  victorious  soldiers 
in  other  wars,  become  puffed  up  with  the  pride 
of  power  and  importance,  and  regard  their  van- 
quished enemy  or  employer,  in  the  spirit  of  "  we 
will  show  you  who  is  who  if  you  attempt  to  oppose 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  229 

our  wills. ' '  The  services  of  the  slaves  of  such  masters 
must  necessarily  be  unsatisfactory  to  decent  liberty- 
loving  employers, — employers  who  desire  to  control 
and  manage  their  own  business.  In  every  instance 
if  we  coerce  or  attempt  to  coerce  an  honorable,  intelli- 
gent man  to  do  our  bidding  against  his  protests  and 
judgment,  we  lose  more  than  we  gain  in  the  end.  A 
man  who  will  not  do  that  which  is  right  and  just,  on 
proper  representation  and  without  coercion,  is  not 
a  fit  man  for  honest  men  to  work  for,  and  a  man  or 
combination  of  men  who  would  coerce  an  employer 
to  do  a  thing  against  his  business  judgment,  are  not 
fit  men  to  have  in  his  employ.  It  is  shown  by  recent 
reports  from  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Labor,  that  the 
annual  loss  to  organized  labor  in  this  country  by 
striking  employees  is  approximately  fifteen  to  twenty 
million  dollars,  a  heavy  burden  upon  a  class  of  men 
who  are  the  least  able  to  bear  losses  of  any  kind. 
If  labor  organizations  lose  as  much  in  the  successful 
strikes  as  in  the  unsuccessful  ones,  they  lose  from 
seven  to  ten  millions  dollars  every  year,  a  large  sum 
for  mostly  poor  men  to  pay  for  empty  glory  and  vic- 
tories,— victories  which  determine  nothing  of  lasting 
interest  to  factional  organized  labor,  except  that  it 
may  serve  to  gradually  force  upon  the  attention  of 
the  members  that  they  are  paying  dearly  for  their 
slavery.  The  same  report  from  the  Bureau  of  Labor 
shows  that  the  annual  loss  to  employers  by  strikes 
has  been  six  to  eight  million  dollars.  But  these  losses 
of  employers  and  striking  employees  are  no  doubt  the 
smaller  part  of  the  losses  sustained  by  the  country 


230  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

by  strikes  and  the  resulting  riots,  insurrections,  de- 
struction of  property  and  general  lawlessness  of  the 
strikers.  As  we  have  stated  with  some  reiteration, 
in  our  complicated  civilization,  one  part  of  the  social 
organism  cannot  be  injuriously  affected,  without  in- 
juriously affecting  all  other  parts.  It  is  therefore 
estimated  by  some  of  the  industrial  associations  that 
the  losses  to  the  country  by  industrial  disturbances, 
strikes  and  the  resulting  riots,  insurrections  and  de- 
struction of  property  and  suspension  of  business, 
amounts  to  about  two  hundred  millions  of  dollars 
a  year,  losses  which  are  equal,  if  not  greater  than 
the  losses  by  fires.  An  organization  so  blind  to  its 
own  interests,  so  heedless  of  the  common  welfare,  so 
destructive  of  the  energy  and  prosperity  of  the  coun- 
try, and  so  reckless  in  ignoring  the  equal  rights  of 
others,  must  have  organized  opposition  to  check  its 
unjust,  tyrannical,  selfish  and  lawless  conduct,  if 
we  would  arrest  the  tendency  towards  social  dissolu- 
tion and  anarchy. 

When  labor  leaders  who  conduct  a  strike,  force  an 
employer  to  accept  their  demands,  no  matter  whether 
the  demands  were  for  an  advance  in  the  wages  of 
the  members,  or  for  the  discharge  of  an  independent 
workman,  or  to  unionize  his  plant,  they  immediately 
become  so  intoxicated  with  power  and  importance, 
that  the  successful  strike  is  hardly  settled  before 
they  are  scheming  for  another,  by  making  the  weak- 
minded  and  vicious  members  of  the  organization  be- 
come dissatisfied  with  some  feature  of  their  work, 
or  with  the  terms  of  settlement.  The  new  demands 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  231 

may  be  so  glaringly  foolish  and  unreasonable  that  the 
masters  will  not  press  them  hard,  knowing  that  they 
will  not  bear  airing  to  the  public,  and  finding  no 
prospect  of  the  employer  yielding  to  a  further  hold- 
up, call  the  strike  off.  The  employer  takes  the  strik- 
ing employees  back,  and  the  masters  claim  another 
victory  for  the  supremacy  of  union  labor.  "We  see 
here  that  the  only  persons  who  do  not  lose  by  the 
transaction  are  the  union  officials,  the  managers  of 
the  strike,  the  teachers  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness. 
Even  if  the  members  secure  an  advance  in  their 
wages  by  winning  the  strike,  the  amount  of  wages 
lost  while  they  were  out  would  require  many  months 
of  the  advance  to  balance ;  besides  this  extra  amount 
in  the  advance,  is  in  nearly  every  case,  swept  away 
by  the  inordinate  greed  of  the  union  officials  who 
must  be  paid  their  fees  and  see  that  assessments  are 
made  for  various  purposes,  as  paying  lawyers  for 
defending  hired  criminals  of  the  unions,  and  in  pay- 
ing lobbyists  to  look  after  labor  legislation  before 
Congress  and  the  State  legislatures.  It  has  been 
shown  by  the  investigations  of  the  Bureau  of  Labor 
that  about  one-half  of  the  union  labor  strikes  are 
successful,  and  yet  there  is  no  evidence  to  show  that 
the  members  of  the  unions  who  were  engaged  in  suc- 
cessful strikes,  are  any  better  off  than  the  members 
who  were  engaged  in  unsuccessful  strikes. 

The  successful  strike  is  detrimental  to  the  interests 
of  the  members  in  the  respect  that  it  always  intoxi- 
cates the  union  officials  with  power  and  importance 
to  such  extent  that  they  are  certain  to  lead  them  into 


232  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

another  strike  which  may  terminate  their  service 
with  their  employer  and  oblige  them  to  look  for  jobs 
elsewhere,  with  many  months  of  idleness  and  loss  of 
wages.  There  is  also  the  great  wrong  of  preventing 
deserving  free,  independent  men  from  working  who 
desire  to  work,  and  need  the  wages  of  honest  toil  for 
themselves  and  families.  We  thus  see  it  is  impossible 
for  the  working  members  to  escape  losing  when  they 
win,  for  the  ever  greedy  and  hungry  masters 
are  always  on  hand  ready  to  take  from  them  a  large 
part  of  their  earnings  on  some  pretext  or  other. 
Every  successful  strike  causes  the  members  a  further 
loss  of  independence  and  industrial  freedom,  and 
increases  the  power  of  their  masters  to  more  securely 
fasten  the  union  slavery  upon  them,  and  to  throttle 
the  last  spark  of  liberty  in  them.  When  men  surren- 
der their  individuality  and  industrial  freedom  to  an 
organization  which  is  always  controlled  and  directed 
by  men  who  manipulate  and  use  it  to  satisfy  their 
own  selfish  ends,  they  are  certain  to  be  treated  as 
slaves  and  to  get  no  more  of  the  wages  of  their  hon- 
est toil  than  the  strength  of  their  individuality  will 
insist  upon.  There  is  no  form  of  slavery  in  which  the 
masters  are  generous  enough  to  allow  their  slaves  to 
depend  upon  their  own  initiative  in  securing  remun- 
erative employment.  Of  course  we  know  that  the 
proponents  of  unionism  are  constantly  talking  about 
the  advantages  of  collective  bargaining  for  those  who 
have  their  labor  for  sale.  There  may  be  advantages 
in  that  system,  but  it  has  never  been  fairly  tested,  and 
we  cannot  know  how  much  merit  there  is  in  it  until 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  233 

laboring  men  are  permitted  to  voluntarily  enter  into 
it  instead  of  being  coerced  into  it,  as  now  universally 
practiced.  We  have  frequently  referred  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  unions  as  having  surrendered  their  indi- 
viduality and  industrial  freedom,  but  probably  in 
most  cases  the  surrender  was  not  voluntary,  having 
been  brought  about  by  force  and  intimidation.  And 
knowing  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  membership 
of  the  unions  has  been  secured  by  the  coercive 
methods  of  the  masters,  should  arouse  our  profound 
sympathy  for  men  thus  enslaved  in  a  country  that 
boasts  of  being  a  land  of  freedom.  The  false  and 
pernicious  teachings  of  the  masters  that  employers 
have  no  rights  that  the  members  are  bound  to  respect, 
can  never  be  an  advantage  to  them,  but  on  the  con- 
trary productive  of  much  harm  in  preventing  the 
cordial  relations  between  two  classes  of  men  whose 
interests  and  welfare  are  indissolubly  bound  to- 
gether. There  can  be  no  permanent  advantage  to 
the  members  to  allow  themselves  to  be  used  as  slaves 
by  the  masters,  to  boycott  and  destroy  the  business 
of  men  which  was  built  up  by  years  of  honest  effort 
and  toil;  men,  too,  against  whom  there  were  never 
any  charges  of  unfair  dealing,  and  men  against  whom 
nothing  could  be  said  except  that  they  would  not 
comply  with  unreasonable  demands  of  union  officials 
to  supervise  their  business.  No  thoughtful  man  will 
contend  that  it  will  be  an  advantage  to  the  members 
to  give  up  their  independence  and  freedom  and  allow 
the  masters  to  use  them  as  slaves  for  the  treasonable 
purpose  of  setting  up  the  authority  of  the  unions 


234  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  peoples  govern- 
ment. It  will  not  be  to  their  interest  as  good  citizens 
to  allow  themselves  to  be  used  by  the  masters  as 
slaves  and  criminals,  to  wreck  passenger  trains  and 
street  cars  with  awful  loss  of  human  life,  and  to  s-is- 
pend  all  business  of  communities  until  the  suffering 
of  all  classes  becomes  so  great  that  the  masters  hope 
that  the  public  will  intervene  and  force  the  offending 
employer  to  yield  to  their  demands  to  save  further 
suffering  of  the  people  and  losses  to  business.  It 
seems  to  be  a  dominant  and  favorite  idea  of  the  union 
officials  that  if,  in  ordering  a  strike,  they  can  bring 
about  a  suspension  of  business,  and  an  intolerable 
condition  of  suffering  and  inconvenience  to  all 
classes,  by  the  lawless  acts  of  hired  thugs,  sluggers, 
murderers  and  dynamiters  of  the  unions,  that  the 
public  will  appoint  committees,  always  naming  a 
representative  of  the  union  on  it,  to  confer  with  and 
bring  pressure  to  bear  upon  the  offending  employer, 
to  have  him  yield  to  the  demands  of  the  union  of- 
ficials. This  savage,  brutal  and  wicked  practice  of 
the  unsympathetic,  selfish,  greedy  masters,  who  will- 
ingly by  rioting  and  lawlessness,  bring  upon  com- 
munities a  suspension  of  business  and  great  suffering 
of  all  classes,  particularly  the  poorer  classes,  from 
cold  and  hunger,  has  been  successful  in  a  few  in- 
stances in  bringing  employers  to  terms  by  the  inter- 
vention of  a  terrorized  public.  We  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  saying  that  such  intervention  has  made  the 
public  wiser,  and  that  it  will  never  again  attempt  it, 
for  every  sensible  man  knows  that  such  intimidation 
of  the  public  must  have  the  effect  of  inflating  the 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  235 

sense  of  importance  and  arrogance  of  the  union  of- 
ficials beyond  all  bounds. 

We  heard  a  good  deal  a  few  years  ago  about  the 
Union  and  Confederate  soldiers  clasping  hands  across 
the  bloody  chasm,  of  fraternizing  and  forgetting  the 
cause  that  had  for  four  years  of  blood  and  strife  on 
the  battle  fields  made  them  deadly  enemies.  Many 
of  us  never  dreamed  that  we  should  ever  live  to  see 
the  day  when  these  bitter  foes  of  the  bloodiest  war 
in  the  history  of  the  world,  should  march  arm  in  arm 
at  their  reunions,  and  on  all  patriotic  occasions,  as 
we  see  every  year,  keeping  step  to  the  music  of 
"The  Battle  Cry  of  Freedom,"  "Dixie,"  or  "The 
Girl  I  Left  Behind  Me."  The  leaders  of  the  men  of 
those  mighty  armies,  have,  with  few  exceptions,  from 
the  close  of  that  great  struggle,  counselled  peace, 
good  will  and  fraternal  relations  between  the  Blue 
and  the  Gray,  and  to  always  remember  that  they  had 
a  common  destiny,  and  were  equally  interested  in  the 
prosperity  and  greatness  of  our  common  country. 
The  generous  impulses  of  the  veterans  of  both  sides 
of  that  mighty  struggle,  have  sanctioned  and  en- 
couraged the  intermarriage  of  their  sons  and  daugh- 
ters throughout  the  land  which  was  drenched  by 
their  youthful  blood.  Now  we  should  like  to  see  the 
leaders  of  unionism  counsel  their  following  to  fra- 
ternal relations  with  all  classes  of  our  people,  and 
on  Labor  Day,  and  on  all  patriotic  occasions,  it  would 
be  pleasing  to  see  unionists  and  independent  workers, 
marching  arm  in  arm,  and  keeping  step  to  the  music 
of  our  National  Union  now  and  forever  one  and  in- 
separable. 


CHAPTER  XVTIL 
TO  SEE  OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SEE  US. 

"  0  wad  some  power  the  giftie  gi'e  us 
To  see  oursel's  as  ithers  see  us." 

Those  whose  lives  are  spent  in  usefulness  to  them- 
selves, to  their  families  and  to  their  fellowmen,  will 
hardly  object  to  seeing  themselves  as  others  see 
them;  but  those  whose  lives  are  spent  in  a  manner 
condemned  by  their  own  conscience  and  by  the  pub- 
lic, will  not  likely  wish  to  see  themselves  as  others 
see  them.  Every  sane  person  should  wish  his  con- 
duct to  be  such  that  when  seen  and  judged  by  all 
others  competent  to  judge  between  right  and  wrong 
conduct,  it  will  be  reflected  back  to  him  in  an  approv- 
ing manner.  It  is  the  spirit  of  wishing  to  see  our- 
selves as  others  see  us,  that  has  in  all  ages  and 
among  all  peoples,  developed  the  hero  who  willing!}' 
and  courageously  endured  extraordinary  dangers 
and  hardships  for  the  purpose  of  accomplishing  some 
great  benefaction  for  his  fellowmen.  In  all  ages  and 
nations  those  who  have  unselfishly  performed  great 
feats  for  the  benefit  of  the  public,  have  received 
hearty  applause  of  all  who  felt  a  sincere  interest  in 
the  happiness  and  well  being  of  their  fellowmen. 
This  desire  to  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  has  been 

236 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  237 

a  constant  stimulus  to  noble  deeds  and  great  achieve- 
ments, which  have  crowned  the  efforts  of  the  grand- 
est characters  through  all  the  ages  past.  It  has  from 
primitive  times  down  to  the  present  day,  led  men 
to  perform  heroic  acts  for  the  public  benefit,  without 
demanding  pay  in  advance,  knowing  that  they  would 
be  honored  and  applauded  and  held  in  high  esteem 
by  those  upon  whom  their  benefactions  fell.  It  has, 
without  demanding  pay  in  advance  from  the  unfor- 
tunate, led  men  of  altruistic  and  generous  natures 
to  become  public  benefactors  in  a  thousand  ways.  It 
has  kept  men  of  noble  unselfish  natures  in  their  lab- 
oratories and  in  the  field  of  investigation,  patiently 
studying  and  experimenting  with  problems  and  ques- 
tions which,  when  worked  out,  were  benefactions  to 
the  world,  to  mankind.  It  has  made  men  with  tender 
sympathies  for  their  more  unfortunate  brothers,  suf- 
fer contumely  and  persecution  for  daring  to  do  that 
which  they  knew  was  right,  as  in  advocating  the 
abolition  of  slavery,  and  which  they  knew  would 
afterwards  be  applauded  and  approved  as  a  public 
benefaction  by  an  enlightened  public  conscience.  It 
has  been  an  inspiration  to  the  poet,  the  man  of 
science,  the  historian  and  the  business  and  profes- 
sional man  of  every  kind,  to  do  something  that  would 
connect  his  name  with  some  public  benefaction; 
something  that  would  enlarge  the  mental  horizon, 
the  independence  and  freedom  of  his  fellowmen; 
something  that  would  be  useful  to  his  fellowmen 
while  being  useful  to  himself ;  something  that  would 
make  others  happy  while  making  himself  happy; 


238  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

something  that  would  make  two  blades  of  grass  grow 
where  one  had  grown  before.  It  has  been  an  in- 
spiration for  thoughtful,  unselfish  men  to  demand 
for  all  other  men,  all  the  privileges,  all  the  rights 
to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  which 
they  claim  for  themselves.  It  has  made  these  unself- 
ish men  look  to  the  future  for  their  highest  ideals 
of  life,  instead  of  looking  to  the  past  for  them.  It 
has  made  them  optimistic,  to  look  to  the  future  for 
an  ideal  social  state,  in  which  equal  rights  and  justice 
will  prevail  among  all  men,  instead  of  taking  the 
pessimistic  view  and  looking  for  social  conditions  to 
become  more  chaotic.  It  has  been  a  powerful  correc- 
tor of  the  public  and  individual  conscience,  and  has 
caused  men  of  sensitive  consciences  to  destroy  them- 
selves after  committing  acts  which  were  strongly 
disapproved  by  their  fellowmen,  and  they  were 
forced  to  see  themselves  as  others  saw  them.  It  has 
forced  men  to  a  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  they  can 
not  get  away  from  their  good  or  bad  deeds,  and  that 
they  are  obliged  to  see  themselves  as  others  see  them, 
whether  they  wish  to  or  not.  It  has  shown  men  that 
if  their  lives  are  to  be  held  up  to  them  as  if  reflected 
in  a  mirror,  that  their  conduct  should  be  such  at  all 
times  that  they  will  not  have  occasion  to  look  upon 
it  with  regret  or  shame. 

There  are,  however,  many  men  whose  mental  en- 
dowments are  so  deficient,  and  their  consciences  so 
defective  and  torpid  that  they  are  indifferent  about 
seeing  themselves  as  others  see  them.  We  believe 
that  special  efforts  should  be  made  to  have  the  mem- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  239 

bers  of  the  unions,  particularly  the  officials,  see  them- 
selves as  others  outside  the  organization,  see  them. 
Never  was  there  greater  need  for  men  to  have  a 
mirror  of  their  lives  held  up  to  their  own  souls,  than 
the  officials  of  the  unions  whose  misdeeds  for  years 
have  been  becoming  more  and  more  intolerable  to 
the  free  and  independent,  peace-loving  and  law-abid- 
ing part  of  the  citizens  of  the  country.  It  should 
be  impressed  upon  the  mind  of  every  member  of  the 
unions  that  he  is  looked  upon  by  practically  all  men 
outside  of  the  ranks  of  the  organization,  as  the  slave 
of  masters  whose  envy,  greed  and  selfishness,  pre- 
vents them  from  manifesting  any  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare of  all  the  people ;  that  he  is  looked  upon  as  being 
used  as  a  tool  by  the  masters  to  his  own  detriment 
and  disadvantage  for  the  purpose  of  putting  money 
into  their  pockets  and  power  into  their  hands  to 
enable  them  to  continue  to  squeeze  and  rob  them  and 
to  blackmail  employers;  that  while  he  remains  a 
member  of  the  union  and  under  the  slavish  control 
of  the  corrupt  masters,  he  is  looked  upon  as  a  possible 
law-breaker,  and  as  an  accomplice  in  some  of  the 
desperate  crimes  which  have  disgraced  the  name  of 
the  unions  in  the  eyes  of  all  self-respecting  men, 
that  he  is  looked  upon  as  disloyal  to  the  interests 
of  his  employer,  disloyal  to  the  community  in  which 
he  lives,  and  disloyal  to  the  government  that  pro- 
tects him.  Let  every  member  of  the  unions  be  made 
to  feel  and  see  that  no  man  who  has  not  the  soul  of 
a  slave,  and  who  is  not  vicious  or  feeble-minded, 
would  submit  to  the  dictation  and  slavery  of  such 


240  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

wicked,  heartless,  selfish  masters.  Probably  the  more 
intelligent  part  of  the  membership  of  the  unions 
would  not  like  to  be  told  that  they  are  looked  upon 
by  all  of  the  respectable  and  law-abiding  part  of 
the  community  outside  of  their  organization,  as 
aiders  and  abettors  in  the  numerous  crimes  against 
persons  and  property,  which  are  continually  being 
fostered  by  labor  leaders. 

To  the  vicious  and  feeble-minded,  which  constitute 
such  a  large  part  of  the  membership  of  the  unions,  it 
is  perhaps  needless  to  hold  a  mirror  of  their  lives 
before  them  to  show  them  how  they  are  looked  upon 
by  the  intelligent  and  decent  part  of  the  community 
who  properly  value  their  independence  and  freedom. 
It  may  be  asked  in  all  seriousness  whether  any  intelli- 
gent, self-respecting  member  of  the  unions,  wishes  to 
be  looked  upon  by  the  honest,  law-abiding,  peace- 
loving  part  of  the  community,  as  a  partner  of  the 
walking  delegate  who  goes  around  under  instructions 
from  the  labor  trust  officials  to  order  independent 
workers  off  their  jobs  which  they  have  a  right  to 
take,  or  as  a  partner  of  the  hired  thugs  and  sluggers 
who  are  sent  out  by  the  union  officials  to  assault  and 
drive  independent  workers  away  from  their  jobs? 
When  the  mirror  of  their  lives  is  held  up  to  them,  do 
these  most  intelligent  members  wish  to  see  themselves 
as  cowards  and  lacking  in  the  manhood  to  assert 
their  individuality  and  freedom  and  refuse  to  strike 
when  ordered  to  do  so  by  officials  who  never  strike 
or  never  sweat  or  never  give  up  their  jobs  ?  The  in- 
telligent members  of  the  unions  are  asked  to  consider 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  241 

whether  if  it  is  a  good  thing  for  the  cause  of  labor 
that  they  and  their  families  should  go  for  an  indefin- 
ite time  on  half  rations  or  no  rations,  why  it  would 
not  be  a  better  thing  for  the  cause  for  the  union 
officials  to  go  on  half  rations  or  no  rations  for  the 
same  length  of  time?  A  large  part  of  the  member- 
ship of  the  unions,  perhaps  nearly  one-half,  is  com- 
posed of  intelligent,  good-intentioned  men  who  were 
forced  into  the  organization  by  unjust  and  oppressive 
methods  of  the  officials,  and  we  ask  them  when  a 
mirror  of  their  lives  is  held  before  them,  if  they 
wish  to  see  themselves  as  the  public  sees  them,  asso- 
ciated with  thugs,  sluggers,  murderers  and  dyna- 
miters, in  their  work  of  hate,  destruction  of  property, 
assaulting,  intimidating,  and  murdering  independent 
workers,  blowing  up  bridges,  homes  and  mines,  of 
maiming  horses,  cutting  up  and  destroying  harness 
and  wagons,  beating  and  stripping  women  naked, 
interfering  with  the  burial  of  the  dead,  and  assisting 
in  a  thousand  ways  in  bringing  about  a  state  of  an- 
archy in  peaceful  communities  wherever  a  union  is 
organized,  all  for  the  purpose  of  putting  money  into 
the  pockets  and  power  into  the  hands  of  officials  who 
live  on  the  misfortunes  of  others,  misfortunes  too 
which  they  create?  Do  these  good-meaning  men  of 
the  unions  wish  to  see  in  that  mirror  of  their  lives, 
the  haggard  and  troubled  expressions  of  the  poorly 
fed  and  clothed  families,  wives  and  children,  of  the 
members  of  the  unions,  for  whose  condition  they  are 
in  part  responsible,  just  to  gratify  the  sordid  and 
selfish  ambition  of  men  who  are  demanding  more 


242  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

power,  and  who  have  taken  from  the  members  in  one 
form  or  another,  the  earnings  belonging  to  the  suffer- 
ing families  ?  Do  they  wish  to  see  themselves  in  that 
mirror  as  the  public  sees  them,  opposing  industrious 
men  in  their  honest  efforts  to  provide  a  living  and 
comforts  for  their  wives  and  little  ones?  Do  they 
wish  to  see  themselves  in  that  mirror  as  the  public 
sees  them,  tyrannized  over  by  the  masters  who  do  not 
respect  their  individuality  and  manhood  as  much  as 
the  masters  respected  the  manhood  of  his  slaves  on 
his  plantation  in  times  of  negro  slavery  ?  The  master 
did  provide  substantial  comforts  for  his  slaves,  and 
did  not  allow  them  to  persecute  each  other  to  distrac- 
tion, as  members  of  the  unions  are  often  persecuted 
under  the  direction  of  vicious  leaders,  of  which  there 
seems  to  be  very  many  in  the  unions. 

"We  now  propose  to  hold  the  mirror  of  their  lives 
up  to  the  officials  of  the  unions  for  a  moment  that 
they  may  see  themselves  as  the  public  sees  them.  In 
that  mirror  they  may  see  themselves  as  the  public 
sees  them,  gathering  about  them  in  their  halls  and 
star  chambers,  the  worst  and  most  vicious  characters, 
the  most  heartless  criminals  and  moral  perverts  of 
the  country,  and  of  instructing  and  urging  them  on 
to  commit  the  violent  acts  and  the  most  atrocious 
and  cowardly  crimes  known  to  any  age,  as  arson, 
murder,  assassination,  perjury  and  false  swearing  to 
shield  them  from  conviction  and  punishment  under 
the  peoples  laws,  and  by  hatching  treason  and  incit- 
ing their  vicious  tools  to  riot  and  to  violating  and  de- 
fying the  laws.  In  that  mirror  of  their  lives  they  may 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  243 

see  themselves  as  the  public  sees  them,  standing  by  in 
fiendish  delight,  watching  their  hired  thugs  and  slug- 
gers, two,  three,  or  four  at  a  time,  knocking  down 
with  brass  knuckles,  kicking,  beating  with  pieces  of 
iron,  stones  or  sticks,  putting  carbolic  acid  in  the 
mouth,  and  gouging  out  the  eyes  of  an  independent 
worker  because  he  refuses  to  surrender  his  individ- 
uality and  industrial  freedom  to  the  unions ;  because 
he  has  the  courage  and  manhood  and  determination 
to  work  and  provide  for  his  wife  and  little  ones,  and 
because  he  gives  loyal  allegiance  to  the  peoples 
government,  which  should  afford  him  protection,  in- 
stead of  protecting  a  band  of  traitors  who  propose  to 
set  up  a  government  of  their  own  within  the  peoples 
government  to  exercise  authority  paramount  to  it, 
and  finally  to  control  it  for  enslaving  all  the  people. 
In  that  mirror  they  may  see  themselves  as  the  public 
sees  them,  chuckling  in  fiendish  delight  over  the  news 
brought  to  them  by  some  of  their  partners  in  crime 
of  the  wreck  of  a  passenger  train,  causing  the  death 
and  maiming  of  hundreds  of  innocent  victims  who 
had  never  harmed  them  in  any  manner  whatever,  all 
to  satisfy  the  demands  of  union  labor  and  to  terror- 
ize the  community  into  obeying  the  orders  of  the 
masters  who  never  manifest  any  feelings  of  charity, 
sympathy  and  good  will  towards  those  outside  the 
ranks  of  their  organization.  0  gales  of  the  sea  which 
waftest  the  swift  ships  through  the  silvery  waves, 
through  the  surge  of  the  ocean,  freighted  with  pre- 
cious human  lives,  be  unpropitious  to  the  fiends  of 
the  unions,  who,  with  dynamite  in  their  hands  and 


244  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

evil  intentions  in  their  hearts,  are  ready  to  send  a 
thousand  souls  to  the  bottom  of  the  ocean,  because 
some  traitor  to  his  country,  some  traitor  to  hu- 
man kind,  some  labor  union  official  did  not  have 
his  demands  complied  with  that  no  coal  should 
be  used  by  the  steamer  which  had  been  mined 
by  the  hands  of  free  independent  workers.  0  Jove, 
why  restrain  thou  thy  bolts,  thy  lightnings?  Why 
are  they  idle?  Let  us  further  hold  up  the  mirrors 
of  their  lives  to  the  union  officials  that  they  may 
further  see  themselves  as  the  public  sees  them,  emerg- 
ing from  their  solemn  conclaves,  their  star  chambers, 
where  schemes  of  treason  and  foul  murder  were 
hatched,  and  where  schemes  were  hatched  for  punish- 
ing some  of  their  own  members  for  letting  slip  an 
expression  of  independence,  or  for  non-payment  of 
dues,  or  penalties,  or  assessments  of  some  kind  and 
had  dropped  out  of  the  organization;  or  where  the 
officials  had  been  planning  a  campaign  for  bringing 
some  recalcitrant  employer  to  terms  by  picketing 
his  plant  or  place  of  business  to  prevent  independent 
workers  from  filling  the  places  of  union  employees 
who  had  been  ordered  out  on  strike  because  the  em- 
ployer would  not  comply  with  the  demand  of  the 
union  for  the  discharge  of  independent  workers,  or 
unionize  his  plant.  In  that  mirror  of  their  lives  they 
may  see  themselves  as  the  public  sees  them,  with  eyes 
glistening  with  fiendish  delight  when  they  see  the 
horizon  lighted  up  with  the  flames  of  burning  prop- 
erty which  their  hired  thugs  and  fire  bugs  had  set 
on  fire  to  punish  some  owner  or  employer  who  would 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  245 

not  comply  with  their  demands  to  unionize  his  plant 
and  permit  them  to  take  charge  of  his  business.  In 
that  mirror  of  their  lives  they  may  see  themselves 
as  the  public  sees  them,  with  homicidal  hands  stained 
and  dripping  with  the  blood  of  their  murdered  vic- 
tims who  had  incurred  the  enmity  of  the  unions  be- 
cause they  would  not  surrender  their  individuality 
and  industrial  freedom  to  a  band  of  conspirators 
and  traitors  who  are  constantly  endeavoring  by  the 
foulest  of  means  to  set  up  their  authority  as  para- 
mount to  the  authority  of  the  peoples  government. 
In  that  mirror  of  their  lives  they  may  see  themselves 
as  the  public  sees  them,  like  Shylock  with  pinched 
and  selfish  expression,  insisting  on  securing  for  them- 
selves the  pound  of  flesh,  no  matter  how  unjust  or 
how  much  ruin  and  suffering  it  would  bring  to  other 
men  outside  their  organization.  In  that  mirror  of 
their  lives  they  may  see  themselves  as  the  public 
sees  them,  haranguing  the  vicious,  the  violent,  the 
lawless,  the  assassins,  the  traitors,  and  inciting  them 
to  riot,  to  assaulting  and  murdering  independent 
workers;  to  burn  and  destroy  the  property  of  em- 
ployers ;  to  dynamite  and  blow  up  the  work  done  by 
independent  workmen;  and  of  preaching  to  all  ele- 
ments under  their  control,  to  hate  all  men  who  wish 
to  own  homes  and  to  provide  for  the  comforts  and 
happiness  of  their  families,  and  who  wish  to  enjoy 
the  fruits  of  their  own  labor  without  the  masters 
getting  the  major  part  of  them. 

If  the  union  officials  have  any  sympathy  in  them, 
any  sense  of  honor  or  self-respect,  they  will,  waking 


246  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

or  sleeping,  feel  that  we  have  set  upon  them  to  pur- 
sue them  wherever  they  may  go,  a  thousand  demons 
of  hate,  the  spiritual  essences  of  unionism,  dancing 
around  them  and  brandishing  close  to  their  hearts 
and  around  their  heads  and  bodies,  the  daggers,  the 
clubs,  the  brass  knuckles,  the  stones,  the  brickbats, 
the  missiles,  all  dripping  with  the  blood  of  their  mur- 
dered victims  who  rise  up  before  them  wherever  they 
turn,  exhibiting  to  them  the  gaping  wounds,  the 
bruises,  the  lacerations,  the  eye-balls  gouged  out  and 
hanging  upon  their  cheeks;  the  burned  and  charred 
flesh  of  men,  women  and  little  children  in  wrecked 
passenger  trains,  alt  terrible  sights  for  mortal  eyes 
to  behold.  The  demons  of  hate  still  dancing  around 
them  and  brandishing  their  daggers,  their  clubs  and 
their  missiles,  close  to  the  hearts  and  around  the 
heads  and  bodies  of  the  union  officials,  will  conduct 
them  to  the  homes  of  their  murdered  victims  and  bid 
them  behold  the  widows  and  children  in  anguish  and 
desolation  and  suffering  on  account  of  the  foul  and 
fiendish  murder  of  the  husband  and  father  who  daily 
brought  home  love  and  affection,  food  and  clothing 
and  comforts,  making  all  happy  and  life  worth  liv- 
ing. The  demons  of  hate  still  further  conducting 
the  union  officials  will  take  them  to  the  homes  of  the 
members  whom  they  have  deceived  and  squeezed 
and  robbed  of  their  wages  under  one  pretext  or  an- 
other, and  bid  them  behold  the  families,  the  wives 
and  children,  in  squalor  and  poverty,  whose  sad  ex- 
pressions from  hunger  and  cold  and  insufficient  cloth- 
ing, will  accuse  the  guilty  officials,  trembling  in  their 
knees  from  remorse  and  fear, — fear  of  vengeance 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  247 

that  may  become  contagious  among  those  whom  they 
have  misled  by  many  false  promises  of  betterment. 
The  demons  of  hate  still  conducting  the  union  officials 
to  other  scenes  of  their  fiendish  conduct,  will  visit 
the  chambers  of  the  dead,  and  on  the  way  will  hear 
the  piteous  cries  of  starving  babies  whose  supplies 
of  milk  were  cut  off  by  order  of  the  guilty  officials  to 
convince  the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  power  and 
the  supremacy  of  union  labor.  On  reaching  the 
chambers  of  the  dead,  the  babies  will  rise  up  before 
the  guilty  officials,  and  pointing  their  little  fingers 
straight  to  them,  accuse  them  of  the  terrible  crime  of 
their  starvation. 

There  is  no  good  reason  why  a  unionist  should  not 
wish  to  see  himself  as  the  public  would  like  to  see 
him,  striving  in  generous  rivalry  with  others  outside 
his  organization  in  altruistic  acts  of  all  kinds  tend- 
ing to  banish  envy,  hate  and  selfishness  from  the 
breasts  of  all  men,  and  to  develop  in  their  place, 
charity,  love  and  fraternal  relations.  The  man  with 
generous  and  noble  impulses,  who  is  always  ready  to 
help  along  a  struggling  and  less  fortunate  fellow, 
with  words  of  encouragement  and  sympathy,  does 
not  bear  upon  his  countenance  the  hard  expression 
common  to  those  whose  pessimistic  natures  are  full 
of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness  towards  everybody 
except  those  upon  whom  they  are  able  to  fasten 
themselves.  What  we  want  is  more  of  the  rational 
altruism  in  all  classes  that  will  help  men  to  oppor- 
tunities to  help  themselves,  for  no  unselfish  man  will 
wish  to  be  the  recipient  of  more  benefactions  than  he 
is  able  to  bestow. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

THE  UNIONS  A  LEAGUE  OF  ENVY,  HATE 
AND  SELFISHNESS. 

There  is  not  a  more  respectable  name  for  evil- 
minded  men  to  cloak  their  misdeeds  under  than  that 
of  labor.  And  there  is  not  a  field  in  the  whole  range 
of  human  activities  in  which  wicked,  designing  men 
may  better  exploit  their  schemes  of  spoliation  to  their 
own  profit  and  advantage,  than  the  field  of  labor.  It 
is  only  a  question  as  to  whether  there  are  men  mean 
enough  and  wicked  enough,  to  take  advantage  of 
the  weaknesses  of  great  numbers  of  their  unfortu- 
nate fellowmen.  But  we  may  put  it  down  as  a  cer- 
tainty that  there  are  in  every  community,  a  few  men 
of  selfish,  criminal  instincts,  who  are  always  ready 
to  take  advantage  of  their  more  unfortunate  broth- 
ers. It  is  estimated  that  there  are  nearly  a  million 
insane,  feeble-minded  men  and  women  in  the  homes 
of  families  and  in  the  eleemosynary  institutions  of 
the  country.  We  all  know  that  this  class  of  people 
shade  off  by  insensible  gradations  from  those  who 
have  nearly  normal  minds  to  those  whose  minds  are 
blank,  and  who  are  public  charges.  In  this  zone 
from  those  possessing  nearly  normal  minds  to  those 
who  are  mental  blanks  and  public  charges  in  which 
there  are  all  shades  of  feeble-minded,  we  must  place 

248 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  249 

at  least  one-fourth  of  the  population  in  a  civilization 
like  ours,  a  civilization  that  takes  care  of  its  feeble- 
minded and  allows  too  many  of  them  to  multiply  and 
become  a  heavy  burden  to  the  competent.  When  we 
take  into  consideration  the  feeble-minded  who  are 
public  charges,  the  confined  criminals,  those  of  crim- 
inal instincts  who  prey  upon  society  and  upon  the 
feeble-minded  in  the  zone  described,  we  have  perhaps 
accounted  for  more  than  one-fourth  of  the  popula- 
tion of  this  country.  If  we  should  even  halve  our  esti- 
mate, we  see  what  a  terrible  tax  or  drain  there  is 
upon  the  energy  and  resources  of  the  honest  and 
provident  to  provide  for  those  who  are  public 
charges,  and  the  confined  criminals;  to  help  those 
in  the  feeble-minded  zone,  and  to  restrain  those  of 
criminal  instincts  from  preying  upon  the  competent 
and  incompetent  members  of  the  community. 

One  of  the  greatest  questions  that  confront  the 
competent  and  constructive  elements  of  society  is, 
how  shall  we  most  effectively  restrain  those  of  crim- 
inal instincts  from  preying  upon  those  in  the  feeble- 
minded zone,  and  using  them  to  prey  upon  the  honest 
and  provident  to  rob  and  plunder  them  and  interfere 
with  them  in  the  exercise  of  their  independence  and 
freedom  and  life-serving  functions?  We  thus  see 
that  in  the  name  of  the  unions,  evil-minded  men 
from  "  the  master  of  a  million  minds,"  down  to  the 
local,  have,  in  the  feeble-minded  and  criminally  in- 
clined, a  constituency  of  several  millions  from  which 
to  draw  recruits  to  keep  up  their  league  of  envy,  hate 
and  special  privileges.  When  we  find  a  man  with  as 


250  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

coarse  a  nature  and  as  deficient  in  refined  sentiments 
and  common  decencies,  as  "  the  master  of  a  million 
minds,"  intoxicated  with  power  and  importance, 
who  delights  writh  fiendish  satisfaction  in  hurling 
his  awful  anathma  "  scab  "  at  freedom-loving,  inde- 
pendent workers,  and  any  business  concern  or  insti- 
tution that  dares  to  oppose  his  will  in  its  methods 
of  conducting  its  own  business,  we  should  hardly 
expect  to  find  anything  but  intolerable  arrogance  in 
dealing  with  his  vicious  underlings.  Such  a  man  fitly 
represents  the  head  of  the  league  of  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness,  with  pupils  drawn  from  the  feeble-minded 
and  criminally  predisposed  elements  of  the  com- 
munity. With  such  a  man, — a  man  who  cannot  open 
his  mouth  without  emitting  insulting  and  vile  ex- 
pressions, at  the  head  of  a  great  organization  obed- 
ient to  his  will  as  its  leader  and  teacher,  we  should 
not  expect  more  of  it  than  a  league  of  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness,  making  constant  war  on  the  industrial 
and  commercial  activities  of  the  country. 

An  organization  or  institution  that  sends  forth 
from  its  halls  of  instruction  and  discussion,  men  to 
set  up  an  authority  as  paramount  and  foreign  to  the 
authority  and  constitution  of  the  peoples  govern- 
ment, is  certainly  a  teacher  of  envy,  hate  and  crime, 
destructive  of  loyalty  and  the  best  interests  of  the 
community.  When  it  sends  out  from  its  halls  of  in- 
struction and  discussion,  representatives  to  endeavor 
to  prevent  young  men,  by  every  possible  means,  from 
enlisting  in  the  army  and  navy,  or  from  enrolling  in 
the  militia,  for  the  protection  of  the  common  people 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  251 

in  their  peaceful  pursuits,  from  aggressions  by  inter- 
nal as  well  as  external  foes,  it  is  a  promoter  of  envy 
and  hate  that  tends  to  prevent  the  development  of 
fraternal  relations  between  all  classes  of  our  people. 
When  it  sends  out  from  its  halls  of  instruction  and 
discussion  and  from  its  star  chambers,  its  pupils  with 
orders  to  assault  and  intimidate  free  independent 
workers,  insult  their  families  and  destroy  their  prop- 
erty, because  they  desire  to  support  their  families  as 
liberty-loving  free  men,  instead  of  as  slaves  of  the 
union,  it  is  teaching  and  enforcing  a  doctrine  of  hate 
and  envy  that  tends  to  dissolve  the s  ties  that  should 
bind  the  citizens  together  in  common  fellowship  and 
interests.  When  it  teaches  in  its  halls  of  instruction 
and  discussion  and  everywhere,  its  members  to  hate 
the  government,  its  flag,  its  laws,  and  its  courts,  and 
to  substitute  for  these  the  red  flag  of  anarchy,  it  is 
inculcating  a  doctrine  of  hate  and  envy  that  can 
never  promote  the  common  welfare  and  develop 
good  will  among  men. 

This  league  of  hate  and  envy  of  the  unions,  op- 
presses with  a  tyranny  that  knows  no  bounds,  almost 
every  business  interest,  and  costs  the  country  every 
year  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  hundreds  of 
innocent  lives,  and  an  immeasurable  amount  of 
anguish  and  suffering.  For  the  purpose  of  enforcing 
its  oppressive  demands,  it  has  almost  daily  in  some 
part  of  the  country  turned  loose  its  demons  of  hate, 
murder  and  destruction,  and  in  a  short  time,  pro- 
duced such  a  state  of  anarchy,  violence  and  lawless- 
ness, that  the  local  authorities  could  not  control  the 


252  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

situation,  requiring  the  calling  out  of  the  military 
forces  of  the  State.  It  has  for  the  purpose  of  enforc- 
ing unjust  demands  made  on  an  employer,  not  only 
called  a  strike  of  his  employees  and  forced  a  suspen- 
sion of  his  business,  but  it  has  by  sending  out  its  de- 
mons of  hate,  murder  and  destruction,  caused  a  sus- 
pension of  all  business  in  the  community,  with  the 
attendant  sufferings  and  inconvenience  of  all  classes, 
with  the  view  of  having  the  public  intervene  to  force 
the  employer  to  yield  without  any  regard  to  the  jus- 
tice of  the  demands  made  on  him.  It  has  disre- 
garded all  laws  or  feelings  of  humanity,  sparing 
neither  age  nor  sex,  in  its  efforts  to  enforce  its  brutal 
demands,  by  ordering  its  thugs,  sluggers  and  mur- 
derers, to  stop  the  deliveries  of  supplies  of  milk,  coal 
and  groceries  to  families,  causing  intolerable  suffer- 
ing of  all  classes,  particularly  among  infants  and 
helpless  invalids.  In  its  war  on  peaceful  society,  it 
has  been  destitute  of  sympathy  and  unmoved  by  the 
tears,  the  cries,  and  the  appeals  of  mothers  for  per- 
mission to  buy  food  for  their  starving  babies,  or  coal 
or  fuel  to  afford  them  warmth.  In  all  wars  between 
civilized  nations,  an  army  invading  and  occupying 
foreign  territory,  respects  the  rights  of  the  non-com- 
batant population  and  allows  them  to  pursue  their 
usual  vocations  unmolested;  but  the  masters  of  the 
league  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness,  do  not  spare  any 
class  of  their  fellow  citizens,  old  or  young,  when  they 
attack  a  community  to  enforce  their  unjust  demands. 
When  they  have  tied  up  the  activities  and  suspended 
all  business  of  a  community,  and  crimes  of  all  kinds 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  253 

become  rampant,  they  chuckle  with  fiendish  delight, 
and  the  cries  of  starving  babies  make  music  to  their 
souls,  for  they  seem  to  think  that  by  their  fiendish 
conduct  in  exhibiting  the  awful  power  of  union 
labor,  they  can  force  the  public  to  a  humiliating  sur- 
render to  their  demands  to  bring  pressure  to  bear 
upon  the  offending  employer  to  yield. 

Think  of  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  sending 
out  their  hired  thugs  and  sluggers  to  wreck  passen- 
ger trains  and  dynamite  street  cars,  and  then,  after 
the  appalling  loss  of  life  and  of  torn  and  mangled 
human  bodies,  by  the  wrecks,  startle  and  shock  the 
community  with  horror,  rushing  off  to  the  local  news- 
paper office,  to  deny  in  the  name  of  union  labor,  re- 
sponsibility for  the  fiendish  act.  Thoughtful  minds 
of  the  coming  ages  will  doubtless  ask,  "  why  this 
fiendish  war  of  union  labor  upon  the  innocent  and 
unoffending/'  by  the  demons  of  hate  trained  in  the 
league  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness  ?  The  reply  seems 
to  be  that  the  fiendish  masters  hope  to  terrorize  the 
community  in  which  they  operate,  to  such  extent  by 
a  succession  of  awful  tragedies  and  crimes,  that  it 
will  gladly  yield  to  their  demands  and  acknowledge 
the  supremacy  of  union  labor. 

And  it  is  regrettable  to  know  that  there  are  too 
many  good  citizens,  who,  though  keenly  feeling  the 
unjust  pinch  of  the  slavery,  are  willing  for  the  sake 
of  peace,  to  allow  the  masters  to  have  their  own  way. 
This  weakness  of  good-intentioned  people  in  seeking 
peace  at  any  price,  with  desperate  men  is  always 
expensive  in  the  end,  for  it  is  like  yielding  to  the 


254  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

demands  of  the  blackmailer  who  is  certain  to  keep 
up  his  demands  until  he  ruins  his  victim. 

The  masters  have  the  supreme  audacity  to  appear 
before  Congressional  Committees  to  demand  national 
legislation  that  will  exempt  from  punishment,  their 
hired  thugs  and  sluggers  when  caught,  tried  and 
found  guilty  of  committing  atrocious  crimes  upon 
peaceable  and  law-abiding  citizens.  They  would 
have  the  laws  of  the  country  license  members  of  the 
unions  to  commit  any  criminal  acts  that  would  tend 
to  drive  all  independent  workers  into  silence  or  fear 
to  compete  with  organized  labor,  and  thus  enable 
them  to  complete  their  scheme  of  controlling  all  the 
labor  of  the  country  as  a  labor  trust,  and  to  oppress 
and  control  the  activities  of  all  other  classes  with  an 
intolerable  tyranny  as  it  would  be  in  the  hands  of 
such  men  intoxicated  with  power  and  who  are  unwill- 
ing to  do  anything  for  the  public  good,  and  who 
would  not  be  charged  with  an  unselfish  act.  They 
have  endeavored  to  strengthen  their  power  at  every 
conceivable  point  to  prevent  the  searchlight  of  in- 
telligent and  just  criticism  from  falling  upon  their 
bloody  and  treasonable  conspiracies  and  murderous 
deeds  in  nearly  every  part  of  the  country.  They 
have  had  their  representatives  in  many  of  the  news- 
paper offices  and  in  positions  to  censor  the  news  and 
to  prevent  many  of  the  criminal  features  of  the 
unions  and  their  numerous  lawless  acts  from  going 
to  the  public.  And  then  many  of  the  newspaper 
owners  and  managers,  through  fear  of  offending  the 
unions,  or  of  having  a  strike  of  their  employees,  have 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  255 

been  very  lukewarm  in  criticising  and  giving  to  the 
public  current  information  of  the  general  lawless- 
ness of  the  organization,  and  of  their  evil  influence 
upon  the  prosperity,  happiness  and  well  being  of  the 
community. 

We  have  arrived  at  a  time  when  it  behooves  every 
man  who  is  loyal  to  our  government  and  loves  its 
institutions  and  who  believes  in  the  independence, 
freedom  and  equal  rights  of  all  men,  to  be, on  guard 
and  ready  to  assist  in  resisting  the  open  or  insidious 
attacks  on  our  free  institutions  by  the  teachers  of 
hate  and  selfishness  and  their  socialist  allies.  For 
years  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  have  watched 
their  chances  for  putting  as  many  of  their  pupils 
and  partisans  into  the  elective  and  appointive  offices 
of  the  different  departments  of  municipal,  state  and 
national  governments  as  practicable,  to  assist  them 
in  carrying  out  their  schemes  of  envy,  hate  and  self- 
ishness, by  refusing  loj^al  support  in  enforcing  the 
laws  of  the  people,  or  by  conniving  at  the  lawless  and 
violent  acts  of  the  hired  thugs  and  sluggers.  It  has 
been  the  deliberate  opinion  of  intelligent  men  in  posi- 
tion to  form  correct  judgments,  that  perhaps  most 
of  the  lawlessness,  violence  and  murder,  perpetrated 
by  the  partisans  of  the  union  slavery  have  been  due 
to  the  indifference  and  failure  of  the  law  officers  of 
the  people  to  perform  their  sworn  duties,  because 
they  have  owed  their  positions  to  the  influence  of 
the  officials  of  the  unions.  In  all  counties  in  which 
the  unions  have  considerable  strength  the  masters 
have  not  failed  to  have  an  eye  to  business  when  there 


256  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

was  an  election  to  be  held,  and  just  before  the  con- 
vention or  primaries,  they  are  ever  ready  to  promise 
to  the  candidate  friendly  to  the  union,  the  labor  vote, 
no  matter  which  of  the  political  parties  he  belongs 
to.  In  many  of  the  counties  and  cities  the  two  dom- 
inant political  parties  are  so  nearly  of  equal  strength, 
that  whichever  secures  the  labor  vote,  elects  its 
ticket.  A  county  or  city  ticket  elected  by  this  bal- 
ance of  power  of  the  labor  vote,  is  certain  to  change 
the  entire  county  or  city  administration  to  such 
friendliness  and  subserviency  to  the  union,  as  to  give 
it  a  dominating  influence  in  all  matters,  as  was  done 
in  San  Francisco  when  the  unions  fused  with  one  of 
the  dominant  parties  and  elected  their  ticket.  Imme- 
diately after  the  unions  secured  control  of  the  admin- 
istration of  the  affairs  of  that  city,  it  rapidly  passed 
into  a  condition  of  official  corruption,  spoliation  and 
lawless  and  tyrannical  exactions  of  the  unions,  rarely 
if  ever,  equaled  in  any  other  city.  After  a  large  part 
of  the  city  was  destroyed  by  earthquake  and  fire 
and  the  enterprising  citizens  desired  to  rebuild  as 
rapidly  as  possible,  they  were  terribly  handicapped 
and  crippled  by  the  unions  who  did  all  in  their  power 
to  prevent  skilled  labor  in  the  different  trades  from 
other  parts  of  the  country  coming  to  that  city  to  get 
work,  and  raised  the  scale  of  union  wages  so  high  as 
to  be  almost  prohibitive,  so  that  only  a  few  could 
afford  to  rebuild  under  such  conditions.  It  was 
stated  by  a  representative  of  one  of  the  great  daily 
newspapers*  who  made  an  investigation,  that  every- 

*The  New  York  Sun. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  257 

thing  was  so  thoroughly  unionized  that  no  independ- 
ent worker  could  get  a  job  and  hold  it  for  twenty- 
four  hours.  Finally  the  conditions  became  so  intol- 
erable from  official  corruption  and  the  usual  methods 
of  unionism,  that  the  law-abiding  citizens  rose  up  and 
threw  off  the  yoke  of  oppression,  sent  the  union 
mayor  to  the  penitentiary,  and  elected  city  officials 
who  were  not  dominated  by  the  unions. 

For  the  purpose  of  preventing  independent  work- 
ers from  filling  the  places  of  striking  employees,  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  have  invented  a  scheme 
which  they  call  peaceable  picketing,  a  scheme  by 
which  the  striking  employees  are  massed  and  divided 
into  detachments  of  two,  four,  six  to  a  dozen  men 
and  sent  out  to  guard  all  the  approaches  to  the  plant 
or  place  of  business  in  which  they  had  given  up  their 
jobs  to  go  out  on  strike,  for  the  purpose  of  intercept- 
ing every  independent  worker  going  to  or  coming 
from  his  work,  morning  and  evening,  and  persuade 
him  with  clubs  and  brass  knuckles,  to  leave  his  em- 
ployer to  enable  the  union  to  win  its  fight.  Think  of 
two  to  a  dozen  men  wearing  the  brand  of  the  union, 
waiting  in  the  path  of  an  honest  toiler  for  him  to 
come  along  so  that  they  can  peaceably  persuade  him 
with  clubs  and  brass  knuckles  to  give  up  his  job,  or 
not  to  take  a  job  offered  him.  Such  conduct  is  too 
cowardly  to  be  thought  of  among  free  men  jealous 
of  their  rights,  and  too  transparently  dishonest  to  be 
thought  of  as  peaceful  picketing.  This  peaceful 
picketing  means,  and  the  masters  have  always  in- 
tended that  it  should  mean,  a  demonstration  in  force, 


258  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

that  if  the  independent  worker  going  to  the  plant  or 
place  of  business  to  seek  employment,  or  who  has 
already  secured  employment,  does  not  when  inter- 
cepted by  the  picket,  then  and  there  solemnly  prom- 
ise to  make  no  further  efforts  to  secure  employment, 
and  if  already  employed,  to  leave  it  at  once,  he  is  to 
be  assaulted  and  beaten  into  insensibility,  or  per- 
haps cruelly  murdered  by  the  cowardly  slaves  who 
are  usually  in  such  force  as  to  give  him  little  chance 
of  defending  himself.  In  one  instance  of  peaceful 
picketing,  the  pickets  gave  the  alarm  of  approaching 
independent  workers  to  fill  the  places  of  packing 
house  strikers,  and  the  masters  assembled  and  massed 
the  force  of  the  union,  attacked  the  independent 
workers  in  box  cars  and  captured  them,  forty  to  fifty 
in  number,  and  dragging  them  from  the  cars, 
marched  them  to  union  headquarters,  where  they 
were  severely  lectured  and  then  deported,  marched 
to  the  city  limits  and  warned  at  the  peril  of  their 
lives,  not  to  return.  And  all  this  in  the  land  we 
boast  of  as  "  the  land  of  the  free  and  home  of  the 
brave/'  The  representatives  of  envy,  hate  and  self- 
ishness may  well  feel  their  importance  when  they 
are  thus  able  to  over  ride  the  laws  and  exercise  their 
autocratic  authority  without  opposition. 

This  militant  organization,  with  officers  to  direct  the 
operations  of  belligerent  forces,  as  in  peaceful  picket- 
ing, or  enmasse,  ignores  the  laws  of  the  land,  sets  up 
its  authority  as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the 
peoples  government,  and  like  a  foreign  force  or  invad- 
ing army,  captures  citizens,  deports  or  paroles  them,  or 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  259 

murders  them  as  it  sees  fit.  If  such  conduct  is  not 
treasonable,  the  word  treason  has  lost  its  meaning. 
Think  of  the  thousands  of  peaceable,  law-abiding 
citizens  who  have  been  injured  and  even  murdered 
by  the  partisans  of  the  union  slavery,  and  how  few 
of  their  number  have  paid  the  penalty  of  their 
crimes,  or  have  even  been  restrained  from  commit- 
ting further  crimes.  The  time  has  come  when  the 
friends  of  law  and  order,  the  friends  of  organized 
society  should  fight  back  when  assaulted  by  the 
enemies  of  our  country,  and  see  to  it  that  we  shall 
not  be  so  stupid  as  to  allow  them  to  destroy  more  of 
TIS  than  we  destroy  or  injure  of  them.  General  Sher- 
man said  that  war  is  hell,  and  the  masters  of  the 
union  slavery  have  made  their  incessent,  one-sided 
wars  of  piracy  and  slave-making,  murder  and  de- 
struction of  property,  for  nearly  forty  years,  a  hell 
to  this  country  without  receiving  blow  for  blow  as 
they  deserved.  This  organization  of  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness  that  teaches  its  members  to  be  disloyal  to 
our  government,  disloyal  to  the  communities  where  it 
has  any  influence,  disloyal  to  the  interests  of  em- 
ployers, and  to  brutally  persecute  their  more  unfor- 
tunate brothers,  deserves  to  be  treated  as  an  alien  in- 
stitution until  it  displays  a  sense  of  loyalty  to  our 
Government  and  shows  some  interest  in  the  common 
welfare. 

There  is  a  saying  as  old  as  the  time  of  Thalez,  that 
tyrants  rarely  die  natural  deaths,  and  the  histories 
of  the  nations  of  the  Old  World  show  us  that  the 
thrones  of  their  rulers  have  frequently  been  stained 


260  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

with  blood  of  tyrants.  This  fact  should  be  an  im- 
pressive lesson  for  "the  master  of  a  million  minds ;" 
chief  tyrant  and  oppressor  of  the  slaves  whom  he 
has  helped  to  make,  and  whose  families  he  has  helped 
to  starve  by  robbing  them  of  the  earnings  due  them  ; 
chief  fiend  of  the  fiends  whom  he  has  helped  to  edu- 
cate to  carry  the  torch,  to  rob,  murder,  and  dynamite 
the  thousands  of  innocent  victims,  men,  women  and 
children,  who  have  never  harmed  him  or  his  partners 
in  hate  and  crime;  chief  teacher  of  hate  and  envy 
towards  those  who  wish  to  live  in  peace  and  broth- 
erly love,  and  who  do  not  ask  any  more  rights  and 
privileges  than  they  are  willing  to  concede  to  all 
others.  The  saying  about  tyrants  should  be  an  im- 
pressive lesson  to  the  chief  tyrant  and  disturber 
of  social  order,  for  suppose  that  by  a  psychological 
suggestion  some  of  the  desperate  characters  whom 
he  has  been  instrumental  in  educating  in  envy,  hate 
and  crime,  should  have  their  attention  directed  to 
him  and  his  associate  tyrants  and  teachers,  with  the 
view  of  becoming  heroes  in  the  transaction  by  mak- 
ing him  a  victim  of  the  teachings  of  his  own  wicked- 
ness. The  teachers  of  envy,  hate  and  selfishness  are 
either  traitors  to  the  country,  or  aliens,  and  in  the 
event  of  becoming  victims  of  those  whom  they  have 
educated  in  crime,  who  would  feel  interest  enough 
to  make  complaint  about  a  matter  which  nearly 
every  one  would  regard  in  the  light  of  alien  thieves 
falling  out  among  themselves.  They  should  be  able 
to  see  that  the  men  they  are  training  to  do  their  foul 
and  bloody  work,  might  come  to  see  as  much  glory  in 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  261 

giving  them  a  taste  of  their  own  perfidy,  as  in  obey- 
ing orders  to  butcher  poor  helpless  " scabs/'  pour 
carbolic  acid  in  their  mouths  or  gouge  their  eyes  out 
while  engaged  in  efforts  to  support  their  families  by 
honest  toil.  If  the  "master  of  a  million  minds " 
should  be  knocked  down  with  brass  knuckles  and 
kicked  and  cuffed  and  have  his  ribs  broken  and  an 
eye  gouged  out  by  some  of  his  trained  thugs  or 
sluggers,  what  right  would  he  have  to  appeal  to  the 
constituted  authorities  for  protection  or  redress,  or 
to  have  his  assailants  punished,  after  having  trea- 
sonably set  up  his  authority  in  many  instances  as 
paramount  to  the  established  authority  of  the  peo- 
ple ?  He  seems  to  be  advancing  to  such  a  position  at 
a  rapid  pace,  unless  he  is  more  fortunate  than  most 
other  tyrants  of  the  world  who  brought  about  their 
own  ruin.  He  does  not  seem  to  realize  that  he  is  play- 
ing with  fire  in  the  most  careless  manner.  There  is 
a  widespread  belief  in  a  law  of  compensation;  that 
whatsoever  a  man  measures  out  to  another,  shall  in 
due  course  be  measured  back  unto  him. 

Before  the  abolition  of  slavery,  an  abolitionist 
wearing  a  cotton  fabric  or  garment,  by  the  law  of 
association,  could  hardly  look  upon  it  without  the 
thought  coming  into  his  mind,  that  the  material  of 
the  garment  in  the  raw  state  was  produced  by  slave 
hands,  by  men  restrained  of  their  liberty,  men  who 
were  bought  and  sold  and  held  as  chattels  as  other 
live  stock.  Wherever  cotton  goods  were  offered  for 
sale,  they  bore  the  seal  of  the  negro  slavery  of  the 
South,  because  the  Slave  States  of  the  South  pro- 


262  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

duced  by  slave  labor  nearly  all  the  cotton  used  in 
the  factories  of  England  and  this  country.  Those 
familiar  with  the  laws  of  psychology  know  that  the 
sight  of  an  object  will  generally  bring  into  the  mind 
the  thought  of  another  object;  that  we  cannot  hear 
a  voice  without  thinking  of  the  person  whose  voice 
it  is,  or  trying  to  associate  it  with  some  one  we  know. 
Every  intelligent,  thinking  man  wearing  a  cotton 
garment  knew  that  every  fibre  in  it,  when  traced 
back  through  the  various  transformations  to  the 
cotton  seed  planted  in  the  ground,  had  passed 
through  the  hands  of  slaves  who  were  deprived  of 
their  liberty,  their  independence  and  freedom,  on 
account  of  the  color  of  their  skins.  These  cotton 
goods,  the  trade  mark  of  negro  slavery,  were  a  con- 
stant reminder  to  the  liberty-loving  man,  the  aboli- 
tionist, that  it  was  his  duty  to  arouse  the  public  con- 
science and  to  educate  it  in  every  possible  manner  to 
a  realization  of  the  great  wrong  of  slavery;  that  it 
should  find  no  favor  with  a  conscious,  self-respect- 
ing, liberty-loving  people,  and  that  there  should  be 
no  cessation  of  the  agitation  until  every  slave  should 
be  free.  Shall  we,  who  passed  through  that  great 
crisis  and  who  did  our  part  in  bringing  about  the 
emancipation  of  some  four  millions  of  negro  slaves 
of  the  South,  stand  idle  while  liberty  lies  prostrate 
and  bleeding  and  not  raise  our  voice  in  protest 
against  the  continued  existence  of  the  union  slavery 
and  make  no  effort  to  emancipate  the  two  millions 
of  union  slaves?  Every  man  jealous  of  his  own 
rights,  should  be  and  generally  is,  jealous  to  the  point 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  263 

of  insistence,  on  the  equal  rights  of  all  other  men. 
Every  man  who  places  a  proper  estimate  on  his  inde- 
pendence and  freedom,  and  who  desires  the  inde- 
pendence and  freedom  and  equal  rights  of  all  other 
men,  should  not  buy  or  use  any  article  of  manufac- 
ture bearing  the  Union  Label,  the  trade  mark  of 
union  slavery.  Every  free  man  who  sees  that  label 
on  any  article  of  manufacture,  should  reflect  a  mo- 
ment on  its  history  and  what  it  stands  for.  He 
should  reflect  that  it  stands  for  a  system  of  union 
slavery  that  has  for  its  object  the  destruction  of 
industrial  and  commercial  freedom  everywhere,  and 
is  in  many  respects  more  intolerable  to  communities 
and  more  debasing  to  the  slaves  than  was  negro 
slavery.  He  should  reflect  that  it  stands  for  a  sys- 
tem of  union  slavery  in  which  the  slaves  are  bound 
to  masters  who  are  constantly  using  them  to  enslave 
other  men;  to  control  and  supervise  the  business  of 
merchants,  manufactures  and  all  other  lines  of  trade 
employing  labor;  to  persecute  to  the  bitter  end  all 
members  known  to  have  expressed  a  wish  for  inde- 
pendence and  freedom,  and  to  have  fallen  under  the 
curse  of  the  unions  and  to  attack  the  business  of 
communities  and  individuals  by  bringing  about  the 
suspension  of  business,  a  state  of  anarchy,  riot  and 
bloodshed,  and  losses  running  into  millions  of  dollars, 
because  the  communities  would  not  consent  to  the 
blackmailing  demands  of  the  wild,  reckless  masters. 
The  label  of  the  union  slavery  attached  to  any  article 
of  manufacture,  tells  the  buyer  more  eloquently  than 
words  can  describe,  that  it  is  the  trade  mark  of  a 


264  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

despotism  of  hate  and  selfishness  in  partnership  with 
anarchy,  crime  and  treason,  that  has  been  more 
heartless  and  cruel  to  those  from  whom  it  exacts 
allegiance,  and  employers  whom  it  has  reduced  to 
subjection,  than  any  other  slavery  that  ever  existed ; 
that  it  has  been  more  destructive  and  demoralizing 
to  the  best  interest  of  communities,  than  pestilences, 
than  the  losses  by  fires,  floods  and  earthquakes ;  that 
it  has  attacked  peaceable,  law-abiding  citizens  whose 
only  offense  was  a  determination  to  exercise  their 
inalienable  right  of  independence  and  freedom,  with 
a  fierceness  and  cruelty  unknown  among  the  lowest 
savages.  This  label,  the  trade  mark  of  the  union 
slavery,  reminds  us  that  like  the  black  flag,  it  is  a 
sign  or  symbol  that  those  who  use  it  give  no  quarter 
to  those  who  do  not  give  allegiance  to  it.  No  intel- 
ligent and  conscientious  man  will  contend  that  this 
label  on  any  article  of  manufacture,  means  anywhere 
good  will  and  fraternal  relations  among  men,  or  that 
its  use  tends  to  develop  fraternal  relations  among 
all  classes  of  our  national  family.  No  matter  where 
it  is  used,  it  is  a  sign  of  slavery  and  envy,  hate  and 
selfishness  that  ought  not  to  be  perpetuated. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

SLAVES  NEVER  WIN  THEIR  OWN  FREEDOM 
UNAIDED  BY  OUTSIDE  INFLUENCES. 

The  bettering  of  the  conditions  of  the  oppressed 
never  comes  from  the  complaints  of  the  oppressed  to 
their  masters.  Before  the  oppressed  find  relief  from 
their  oppressions,  others  than  their  masters  must 
be  touched  with  sympathy  and  a  sense  of  justice. 
The  enactment  of  laws  for  the  prevention  of  the 
cruelty  to  animals  was  never  brought  about  by  the 
complaints  of  the  abused  animals.  And  further 
along  in  the  evolution  of  our  race,  the  abolition  of 
the  custom  of  making  slaves  of  prisoners  of  war,  as 
in  ancient  Greek  and  Roman  times,  was  not  accomp- 
lished by  the  complaints  and  pleadings  of  the  pris- 
oners, that  it  was  wrong  to  hold  them  as  slaves.  No 
intelligent,  thoughtful  man  will  contend  that  the 
abolition  of  domestic  slavery  in  this  country,  was 
accomplished  by  the  prayers  and  petitions  and  ex- 
positions of  their  wrongs  by  the  slaves  themselves. 
The  abolition  of  the  tortures  and  cruelties  of  the 
Inquisition  was  brought  about  by  the  victims,  only 
in  so  far  as  they  assisted  by  vigorous  dieussion  in 
developing  sentiments  of  sympathy,  justice  and  equal 
rights  among  the  most  progressive  men  of  the  times. 
Nor  have  the  bettering  of  the  conditions  of  the  labor- 

265 


266  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ing  men  of  this  country  been  accomplished  by  the 
teachings  of  hate  of  those  calling  themselves  cham- 
pions of  labor,  for  these  champions  have  uniformly 
been  on  the  side  of  those  who  have  denied  equal 
rights  and  justice  for  all,  and  have  plead  and  de- 
manded special  privileges  and  immunities  for  a  small 
faction  of  labor,  which  they  call  organized  labor. 
Indeed  those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions  have  done  more  to  oppress 
the  laboring  men  of  this  country,  except  the  faction 
of  organized  labor  they  represent,  than  all  other 
causes  put  together. 

It  was  not  on  account  of  the  growing  sentiments 
of  sympathy  and  justice,  but  a  knowledge  of  the 
fact  that  prisoners  could  be  made  more  useful  as 
slaves  than  by  eating  them,  that  brought  about  the 
abolition  of  cannibalism  of  prisoners  among  our  an- 
cestors. It  was  through  the  evolution  of  the  senti- 
ments of  sympathy  and  justice  and  equal  rights,  that 
caused  the  abolition  of  the  tortures  and  cruelties  of 
the  Inquisition  in  Spain.  It  was  through  the  evolu- 
tion of  these  same  sentiments,  by  heated  and  persis- 
tent discussions,  that  brought  about  the  abolition 
of  African  slavery  in  this  country.  And  it  will  be 
by  the  further  evolution  of  these  same  sentiments 
through  persistent  discussion  that  will  bring  about 
the  abolition  of  union  slavery  of  this  country,  the 
slaves  of  which  are  still  held  as  tightly  in  the  grasp 
of  their  masters,  as  the  negro  slaves  were  held  by 
their  masters.  The  man  of  broad  sympathies  who 
pleads  for  equal  rights  and  justice  for  all,  would  have 


THE  WHITE  SLAYEKY  267 

a  cruel  man  arrested  and  fined  for  beating  his  over- 
burdened horse,  whereas  a  pretended  champion  of 
labor  will  stand  by  and  see  half  a  dozen  of  his  loyal 
slaves  beat  into  insensibility  and  even  to  death,  a  fel- 
low laborer  because  that  fellow  laborer  has  the  cour- 
age of  his  convictions  to  stand  for  individual  free- 
dom, equal  rights  and  justice.  The  conduct  of  those 
who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and  policies  of 
the  unions,  which  is  absolutely  bad,  will  have  the 
useful  purpose  of  calling  the  attention  of  thinking, 
fair-minded  people  to  the  character  of  the  unions  and 
their  aims.  The  rapid  growth  of  the  anti-slavery  sen- 
timent in  this  country,  was  due  to  the  manner  in 
which  the  evils  of  slavery  were  laid  before  the  people 
in  addresses  and  by  lectures  of  the  ablest  thinkers  of 
the  country. 

When  prisoners  were  held  by  their  cannibal  cap- 
tors for  future  use,  they  were  distributed  among 
them  in  such  manner  that  they  had  no  opportunity 
to  discuss  their  condition  among  themselves,  to  plan 
concerted  movements,  or  to  mass  their  strength  to 
effect  their  escape.  If  they  tried  to  escape  singly 
without  weapons  of  offense  or  defense,  they  were 
certain  to  be  overtaken  and  slaughtered  and  eaten 
by  their  captors.  The  spider  by  its  bite  will  paralyze 
its  prey  to  hold  it  alive  until  needed,  so  in  the  con- 
flicts between  primitive  groups  of  men  the  victors 
sometimes  lamed  their  prisoners  that  they  might  be 
easily  held  until  needed. 

In  all  forms  of  slavery,  the  individual  has  more 
freedom  than  a  prisoner,  for  he  may  go  and  come 


268  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

and  perform  many  duties  out  of  sight  of  his  master 
and  without  fear  of  bodily  harm  while  his  actions 
are  in  obedience  to  his  master's  will.  Should  any 
intimation  or  information  come  to  the  master  that 
his  slave  has  a  thought  of  freedom,  he  at  once  be- 
comes more  severe  with  him  and  diminishes  his  lib- 
erty and  sees  to  it  as  far  as  practicable  that  he  does 
not  infect  other  slaves  with  his  rebellious  ideas  or 
desire  for  freedom.  In  times  of  negro  slavery  in  the 
South,  the  discussions  and  arguments  of  the  aboli- 
tionists of  the  North,  were  not  allowed  to  reach  the 
ears  of  the  slaves,  and  any  white  man  found  or  even 
suspected  of  talking  to  slaves  about  their  freedom, 
was  certain  to  be  severely  dealt  with,  perhaps 
whipped  like  a  slave,  tarred  and  feathered  and 
warned  to  leave.  The  slaves  had  no  chance  to  form 
secret  societies  and  to  discuss  ways  and  means  for 
concerted  action  and  massing  their  strength  and 
striking  for  freedom.  Even  if  they  had  managed  to 
secure  preconcerted  action  and  to  mass  their  strength 
of  a  considerable  section  and  strike  for  freedom,  they 
would  have  met  with  inevitable  defeat  when  pur- 
sued, overtaken  and  attacked  by  the  organized  forces 
of  the  State.  It  was  by  the  constant  and  persistent 
agitation  and  discussion  of  the  abolitionists  by  means 
of  the  press  and  lectures,  that  the  public  conscience 
was  awakened  and  educated  up  to  see  the  blight  of 
slavery,  and  that  prepared  the  way  for  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  slaves,  when  the  war,  which  had  been 
precipitated  by  the  leaders  of  the  slave  power,  had 
been  in  progress  about  two  years.  After  the  eman- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  269 

cipation  proclamation  was  issued,  giving  the  slaves 
their  freedom,  they  were  then  able  and  did  perform 
yoeman's  service  in  fighting  for  their  freedom  under 
the  leadership  of  their  friends. 

Now  it  will  probably  be  as  difficult  for  the  union 
slaves  of  this  country  to  escape  from  their  ever-vig- 
ilant masters  as  it  was  for  the  prisoners  of  primitive 
tribes  taken  in  battle,  to  escape  from  their  cannibal 
captors,  until  the  public  conscience  is  awakened  and 
educated  up  to  see  and  feel  the  horrors  of  the  union 
slavery.  Those  who  stand  for  great  public  evils,  like 
the  masters  of  the  union  slavery,  are  always  defiant 
and  overbearing,  and  like  "  the  master  of  a  million 
minds/'  are  fond  of  fulminating  veiled  threats  of 
something  terrible  that  will  happen  if  they  do  not 
have  their  way,  in  paralyzing  or  destroying  their 
intended  victims.  The  friends  of  liberty,  independ- 
ence and  equal  rights,  should  have  thorough  organ- 
ization to  meet  the  constant  guerilla  warfare  of  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  on  the  industrial  activ- 
ities of  the  country,  and  when  the  emancipation  proc- 
lamation shall  have  been  issued,  giving  freedom  to 
the  union  slaves,  they  can  and  doubtless  will  per- 
form splendid  service,  in  fighting  for  their  liberty 
and  industrial  freedom.  When  men  once  lose  their 
freedom,  they  rarely,  if  ever,  have  the  courage  to 
take  the  initiative  to  recover  it  without  the  assist- 
ance of  outside  influence,  for  it  is  well  known  that 
if  any  of  the  white  slaves  intimate  a  desire  for  inde- 
pendence and  freedom,  and  that  desire  is  made 
known  to  their  masters,  the  dissatisfied  slaves  are 


270  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

quickly  made  to  feel  that  the  chains  of  their  bondage 
are  drawn  tighter.  If  the  anathema  "  in  sympathy 
with  scabs,"  hurled  at  the  offending  member  is  not 
sufficient  to  drive  him  into  submission,  the  educa- 
tional committee  of  the  union  may  take  him  in 
charge,  and  nothing  further  is  likely  to  be  heard  of 
his  desire  for  independence  and  freedom. 

By  this  system  of  oppression  and  tyranny  of  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery,  it  is  difficult  for  most 
men  of  the  trades  to  resist  the  pressure  brought  to 
bear  to  force  them  into  the  unions,  and  having  been 
forced  in,  it  is  almost  impossible  for  the  victims  to 
have  the  courage  and  tact  to  get  out  while  the  com- 
munity is  so  cowardly  as  to  have  a  mortal  fear  of 
offending  the  masters.  In  some  communities  where 
this  oppressive  tyranny  has  had  a  firm  hold,  it  has 
been  almost  as  difficult  for  its  victims,  or  intended 
victims,  to  escape  from  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery,  as  it  was  for  the  prisoners  of  primitive  tribes 
to  escape  from  their  cannibal  captors,  or  for  the 
negro  slaves  to  escape  from  their  masters  in  the 
South.  An  industrious  man  with  a  family  to  support, 
with  a  decided  leaning  towards  independence  and 
industrial  freedom,  and  who  does  not  wish  to  join  the 
union,  says  to  his  wife, ' '  What  shall  I  do.  An  organ- 
izer of  the  unions  has  been  after  me  and  told  me  that 
terrible  things  will  happen  to  me  if  I  do  not  join  the 
organization ;  that  I  will  be  looked  down  upon  by  all 
laboring  men  and  called  a  scab  if  I  refuse  to  join. 
My  employer  expresses  himself  as  satisfied  with  my 
work,  but  tells  me  that  he  will  have  to  discharge  me 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  271 

or  all  his  union  employees  will  strike,  or  if  he  has 
no  union  employees  that  he  will  have  to  discharge 
me  because  the  union  has  demanded  it,  and  will  boy- 
cott him  if  he  does  not  discharge  me." 

Every  intelligent  fair-minded  man  knows  that  this 
is  not  an  exaggerated  statement  of  the  case,  and  he 
must  also  know  that  every  class  of  any  community 
that  submits  to  such  intolerable  conditions,  is  being 
bound  as  firmly  as  the  meanest  slave  of  the  unions. 
An  evil  like  the  unions  not  only  oppresses  those 
whom  the  masters  drive  into  the  organization,  but 
its  galling  oppression  is  felt  more  or  less  by  all 
classes  who  would  like  to  enjoy  independence  and 
freedom,  equal  rights  and  justice.  It  sometimes 
looks  as  if  the  evil  of  the  union  slavery  had  taken 
such  hold  upon  our  country  as  to  require  a  desperate 
remedy  to  remove  it.  The  slave-making  chiefs  of 
Africa  who  made  war  on  neighboring  tribes  to  cap- 
ture people  of  their  own  race  to  sell  into  slavery, 
and  the  officers  of  the  ships  in  the  slave  trade,  were 
not  engaged  in  a  more  cruel  and  heartless  business, 
than  the  masters  who  are  engaged  in  fastening  the 
union  slavery  upon  the  country.  Through  the  cow- 
ardice and  indifference  of  those  of  our  people  who 
are  capable  of  placing  a  proper  estimate  on  indi- 
vidual freedom  and  independence,  the  masters  have 
so  firmly  established  the  union  slavery  upon  the  coun- 
try, that  the  slaves  by  their  own  efforts  and  initia- 
tive would  never  be  able  to  recover  their  independ- 
ence and  freedom  without  assistance  and  influence 
outside  their  organization. 


272  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

We  who  believe  that  a  man  should  be  restrained 
and  fined  for  beating  his  horse  or  mule;  we  who 
believe  in  extending  altruistic  acts  of  every  kind 
towards  our  fellowmen  as  far  as  practicable  without 
impairing  our  own  usefulness  and  happiness,  and  we 
who  believe  that  every  man  should  have  freedom  to 
do  all  that  he  wills  provided  that  he  infringes  not  the 
equal  freedom  of  all  other  men,  should  awaken  to 
the  danger  of  the  new  form  of  slavery,  that  threatens 
the  very  foundations  of  our  liberties ;  that  threatens 
the  destruction  of  all  law  and  order,  and  that  has, 
when  it  has  felt  strong  enough,  set  up  its  authority 
as  paramount  to  the  authority  of  the  peoples  govern- 
ment. We  who  have  enlisted  for  the  war  for  the 
preservation  of  free  institutions,  and  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  new  form  of  slavery,  that  has  become 
such  a  menace  to  our  civilization,  have  inscribed  on 
our  banners  "  industrial  and  commercial  freedom, 
and  equal  rights  for  all,  with  special  privileges  for 
none."  While  all  the  people  of  our  country  should 
dwell  together  in  peace  and  brotherly  love  and  re- 
spect for  each  others  rights,  as  the  members  of  one 
great  family,  the  enemy  to  such  views,  the  masters 
of  the  union  slavery  who  make  ceaseless  guerilla  war 
on  orderly  government,  teach  their  slaves  a  religion 
of  hate ;  to  hate  everything  and  everybody  who  does 
not  meekly  submit  to  the  teachings  of  the  league  of 
hate  and  crime  and  special  privileges. 

To  stop  the  extension  of  the  union  slavery  and  to 
free  those  already  enslaved,  our  campaigns  should  be 
devoted  mainly  to  the  education  of  the  susceptible, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  273 

and  to  inspiring  with  courage  those  inclined  to  be 
weak,  that  they  may  go  forth  as  missionaries  in  the 
good  cause  of  enlightenment  and  freedom,  respect 
and  brotherly  love.  Special  efforts  should  be  made 
to  impress  upon  all  classes  the  fallacy  and  wicked- 
ness of  the  doctrine  of  hate,  hatred  of  everything 
that  we  regard  as  best,  that  befouls  every  breath  of 
the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  in  their  crusade  of 
stirring  up  strife  between  those  who  should  be 
friends.  There  are  no  two  sides  to  the  questions  as 
to  whether  a  man  shall  be  free  or  a  slave,  for  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  our  fathers  declared 
that  * '  we  hold  these  truths  self-evident,  that  all  men 

are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with 

certain  unalienable  rights ;  that  among  these  are  life, 
liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness."  Probably 
nearly  nine-tenths  of  our  people  believe  in  the  free- 
dom and  independence  of  the  individual,  that  the 
freedom  of  each  should  be  limited  only  by  the  like 
freedom  of  all,  but  there  are  too  many  who  have  not 
the  moral  courage  of  their  convictions,  and  so  long 
as  their  own  rights  are  not  directly  invaded,  are  too 
indifferent  to  the  conduct  of  their  f ellowmen  towards 
each  other.  It  is  owing  to  the  moral  apathy  and  in- 
difference of  the  intelligent  and  substantial  classes  of 
our  people  as  to  that  which  has  been  going  on  around 
them,  that  the  union  slavery  has  been  permitted  to 
get  such  firm  hold  upon  the  country  that  it  may  re- 
quire a  bloody  war  to  overthrow  it. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

INSTITUTIONS  AND  MEN  JUDGED  BY  THEIR 
CONDUCT. 

In  order  to  evade  responsibility  for  their  acts, 
labor  organizations  refuse  to  incorporate  and  operate 
under  State  Charters,  showing  clearly  that  they  do 
not  propose  to  be  governed  in  their  conduct  by  the 
laws  of  the  land,  the  law  of  equal  freedom,  equal 
rights  and  justice.  Those  who  control  and  direct  the 
principles  and  policies  of  these  organizations  have 
not  yet  made  sufficient  intellectual  and  moral  prog- 
ress to  understand  that  one  part  of  the  social  organ- 
ism cannot  be  injured  without  injuring  all  other 
parts ;  that  one  part  cannot  be  perfectly  free  until  all 
are  free;  that  one  part  cannot  be  perfectly  moral 
until  all  are  moral ;  that  one  part  cannot  be  perfectly 
happy  until  all  are  happy.  There  was  a  time  when 
the  dogs  of  different  quarters  of  Constantinople  who 
lived  on  the  garbage  and  refuse  of  the  city,  would 
fiercely  attack  the  dogs  of  other  quarters  of  the  city 
who  invaded  their  territory  to  share  with  them  in 
feeding  on  the  refuse.  And  history  informs  us  that 
most  of  the  wars  between  savage  tribes  have  been 
caused  by  invading  each  others  hunting  grounds  or 
territory  in  pursuit  of  game.  So  we  see  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  unions  the  survival  of  that  predatory 

274 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  275 

instinct  of  supreme  selfishness  which  will  not  tolerate 
any  one  outside  the  organization  to  compete  with  it 
in  the  labor  market  for  the  work  to  be  done  in  any 
of  the  lines  of  trade  for  which  its  members  are  fitted. 
With  the  evolution  of  sympathy  and  the  moral  senti- 
ments in  those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles 
and  policies  of  the  unions,  and  its  members,  the  pred- 
atory instinct,  and  the  instinct  which  takes  no  more 
account  of  the  rights  of  others  than  those  of  the  tribe 
or  clan,  must  gradually  die  out,  because  those  posses- 
sing such  instincts  will  be  placed  at  a  disadvantage 
in  the  struggle  for  life.  In  the  savage  state  when  the 
members  of  a  tribe  were  obliged  to  struggle  with 
wild  animals  and  other  savages,  only  the  strong, 
cunning,  selfish  and  unsympathetic  were  fit  to  sur- 
vive for  the  weak  and  sympathetic  would  be  the  first 
to  fall  before  their  selfish  and  unsympathetic  ene- 
mies. For  long  ages  after  conquering  chiefs  had 
consolidated  tribes  into  nations,  and  men  were 
obliged  to  live  in  the  presence  of  each  other  under 
some  form  of  government  or  control,  they  still  re- 
tained selfish,  unsympathetic  natures  which  fitted 
them  for  the  destructive  activities  of  the  savage,  un- 
sympathetic state.  Considering  the  natures  of  their 
environments  it  was  needful  that  they  should  still 
retain  in  a  large  measure,  selfish  unsympathetic 
natures  while  they  were  liable  to  attack  by  other 
tribes  or  nations  in  whom  such  selfish,  unsympathetic 
natures  predominated.  Even  now  after  all  the  pro- 
gress that  has  been  made  towards  an  ideal  social 
state,  peaceful  nations  and  individuals  must  con- 


276  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

stantly  keep  themselves  in  defensive  attitudes 
against  the  aggressions  of  the  selfish  and  unsympa- 
thetic. There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  talk  in  recent 
years,  when  discussing  social  questions,  social  prob- 
lems, about  the  brotherhood  of  the  human  race.  That 
sounds  well  in  connection  with  thoughts  of  ideal 
social  conditions,  but  such  conditions  are  very  far 
off  in  the  future,  and  have  little  more  than  a  specu- 
lative interest  for  us.  What  we  want  first  is  a 
brotherhood  of  the  people  of  the  same  nation,  or 
same  race,  meaning  by  brotherhood  a  recognition 
by  all  of  the  equal  rights  of  each  to  life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness ;  a  recognition  that  the  free- 
dom of  each  shall  be  limited  only  by  the  like  freedom 
of  all.  From  our  first  settlements  in  this  country 
along  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic,  we  have  had  to 
struggle  with  Indians  and  wild  animals,  and  some 
of  our  people  have  been  engaged  partly  in  the  preda- 
tory life  of  hunting  and  fighting,  and  some  in  the 
settled  life  of  agricultural,  manufacturing,  mercan- 
tile and  other  kinds  of  industrial  pursuits.  While 
all  this  was  going  on  the  children  of  our  fathers 
were  inheriting  predispositions  and  tendencies  fit- 
ting them  for  destructive  activities  and  peaceful 
activities.  Hence  as  a  matter  of  self-preservation, 
we  have  been  obliged  to  give  considerable  play  to 
the  selfish  and  unsympathetic  feelings,  thus  prevent- 
ing the  more  rapid  development  of  the  altruistic 
and  sympathetic  feelings.  But  now  the  Indians  have 
been  brought  under  control,  and  excite  no  fears  of 
the  population,  and  the  wild  animals  against  which 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  277 

we  have  had  to  contend,  have  been  mostly  destroyed, 
so  that  in  the  future  there  should  be  an  increasing 
development  of  the  altruistic  and  sympathetic  sides 
of  our  lives,  an  increasing  recognition  of  each  others 
equal  rights. 

Thus  the  unions  with  their  concomitant  strikes, 
picketing  of  the  plants  of  employers,  intimidating, 
assaulting  and  murdering  of  independent  workers, 
may  be  looked  upon  as  a  passing  phase  of  that  primi- 
tive life  when  strength  and  valor  were  the  traits 
that  made  men  distinguished  and  measured  their 
greatness  according  to  the  estimates  of  their  fellow- 
men.  From  whatever  point  of  view  looked  at,  the 
union  slavery  like  the  negro  slavery  of  the  South, 
is  an  evanescent  form  of  evil,  a  survival  of  barbar- 
ism, which  we  are  certain  to  outgrow,  as  certain  as 
anything  in  the  future  may  be  foretold.  Both  of 
these  forms  of  slavery,  negro  slavery  and  the  union 
slavery  represent  the  phase  of  our  moral  and  intel- 
lectual development,  and  the  degree  of  our  fitness 
for  an  ideal  social  state,  just  as  the  different  pale- 
ontological  remains  found  in  different  geological 
strata,  represent  the  different  forms  of  life  which 
have  lived  and  died  during  the  past  history  of  the 
earth. 

An  organization  like  the  unions  must  always  be 
judged  by  the  general  conduct  of  those  who  control 
and  direct  its  principles  and  policies,  and  not  by 
their  professions,  which  are  intended  to  deceive  the 
uncritical  and  unsuspecting.  It  is  the  almost  univer- 
sal verdict  of  all  men  outside  the  ranks  of  the  unions, 


278  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

that  the  kind  of  unionism  that  has  prevailed  in  recent 
years  in  this  country,  has  had  a  tendency  to  make 
its  members  trouble-breeders  and  disturbers  of  the 
peace  of  communities,  disloyal  to  the  interests  of 
employers,  disloyal  to  the  government,  and  always 
ready  on  the  slightest  pretext  to  go  on  a  strike, 
engage  in  riots  and  in  the  destruction  of  property  of 
employers,  and  intimidate,  assault  or  murder  inde- 
pendent workers  who  take  their  places.  When  a 
man  in  the  employ  of  another  feels  that  he  can  no 
longer  be  loyal  to  the  interests  of  his  employer  and 
regards  him  as  an  enemy,  he  should  have  enough 
self-respect  to  give  up  his  job  at  once  and  not  ask  to 
be  taken  back.  It  is  a  strange  sort  of  man  who  does 
not  wish  to  be  worthy  of  his  hire ;  who  does  not  wish 
his  service  to  be  the  service  of  a  free  man  in  fulfill- 
ment of  a  contract  between  two  free  men.  The  men 
who  were  ready  at  a  moment's  notice  to  turn  dis- 
loyal to  the  interests  of  their  employer,  to  their  com- 
munity and  to  their  country,  expect  the  men  whom 
they  employ  to  be  loyal  to  their  interests.  If  they 
found  that  their  physicians  were  keeping  them  sick 
to  increase  their  bills  for  professional  services,  to 
get  money  out  of  them,  or  were  guilty  of  malpractice, 
they  would  not  hesitate  to  bring  suit  for  damages 
against  them.  If  their  lawyers  to  whom  they  had 
paid  retainers,  took  cases  against  them,  or  gave  con- 
fidential information  secured  from  them  to  the  other 
side,  they  would  not  regard  such  conduct  as  loyal 
to  their  interests,  and  they  would  no  doubt  make 
great  complaint  about  it.  We  may  suppose  that 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEBY  279 

these  unionists  would  discharge  their  physicians  and 
lawyers  after  finding  out  their  disloyal  conduct,  and 
employ  other  physicians  and  lawyers  in  whom  they 
had  confidence.  And  then  suppose  the  discharged 
physicians  and  lawyers  should  notify  their  patients 
and  clients  that  they  would  not  allow  other  physi- 
cians and  lawyers  to  treat  their  patients  and  handle 
the  litigation  of  their  clients,  and  we  have  an  illus- 
tration of  the  conduct  of  organized  labor  of  almost 
daily  occurrence. 

We  are  closely  approaching  the  time  when  for  his 
own  protection  the  employer  of  labor  will  be  more 
careful  in  taking  into  his  employ  men  whom  he  may 
have  reason  to  believe  will  be  disloyal  to  his  inter- 
ests, and  who  would  be  ready  on  the  suggestion  or 
at  a  sign  from  an  outsider  who  has  no  interest  in 
common  with  the  community,  to  break  a  contract 
solemnly  and  mutually  entered  into.  We  have  now 
made  enough  progress  towards  an  ideal  social  state, 
to  warrant  the  belief  that  men  cannot  willfully  and 
persistently  ignore  the  equal  rights  of  others  without 
bringing  punishment  upon  themselves  in  loss  of  com- 
forts and  happiness,  which  an  honest  and  straight 
forward  course  would  certainly  have  negatived. 
Those  who  are  ready  to  play  the  traitor  to  their  bene- 
factors, to  those  to  whom  they  should  be  loyal,  will 
be  judged  by  their  conduct  and  not  by  their  profes- 
sions, and  as  they  are  even  now  greatly  in  the  min- 
ority, their  progressive  elimination  must  go  on  with 
the  increasing  respect  men  have  for  each  rthers 
rights  to  industrial  and  commercial  freedom 


280  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

Those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  unions,  are  fond  of  expatiating  on 
their  efforts  to  emancipate  the  laboring  classes  from 
the  thralldom  or  servitude  of  capital,  meaning  of 
course  the  union  faction  of  labor.  While  pretending 
to  the  public  that  they  are  champions  of  all  laboring 
men,  they  do  not  tell  us  that  they  are  the  champions 
of  the  labor  trust,  and  are  all  the  time  making  des- 
perate efforts  to  secure  a  monopoly  of  labor  for  the 
unions,  the  members  of  the  trust,  and  that  they  have 
been  making  a  bitter  war  to  prevent  free  laboring 
men,  who  constitute  more  than  nine-tenths  of  all 
labor  from  getting  work  at  all.  Those  whom  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  claim  to  have  emanci- 
pated, appear  to  the  free  and  independent  laborer, 
to  have  only  changed  masters,  to  have  changed  from 
the  masters  who  gave  them  bread  and  clothing  and 
comforts  for  their  labor,  to  masters  who  absorb  their 
wages  and  give  them  only  promises,  hunger  and 
squalor  for  their  loyalty  as  slaves.  If  the  masters  of 
the  union  slavery  had  something  substantial  to  show 
for  their  high  sounding  promises ;  if  they  could  point 
to  the  numerous  happy  homes  their  followers  owned 
in  their  own  right  in  the  communities  where  they 
live,  and  of  their  desirable  citizenship,  then  union- 
ism would  have  something  to  commend  it  to  a  ra- 
tional mind.  It  would  also  have  much  to  condemn 
it,  if  it  were  shown  that  for  every  union  man  who  had 
prospered,  nine  free  laborers  were  deprived  of  their 
right  to  work  and  had  lost  the  good  things  that  hon- 
est toil  will  bring.  The  free  and  independent  laborer 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  281 

may  well  exclaim,  "save  me  from  the  emancipation 
which  unionism  offers."  As  men  become  more  inde- 
pendent, free  and  intelligent,  they  will  insist  that 
unionism  shall  be  judged  by  its  fruits,  by  the  condi- 
tions of  those  who  enlist  under  its  standard,  and  their 
conduct  as  desirable  or  undesirable  citizens.  It  must 
be  able  to  show  that  its  members  are  better  off  in 
every  respect,  have  more  of  the  comforts  of  life,  than 
the  free  and  independent  laborer  engaged  in  like  pur- 
suits, and  display  as  much  patriotism  and  interest  in 
the  common  welfare  as  other  citizens,  to  commend  it 
to  intelligent,  thinking  men.  Those  who  control  and 
direct  its  principles  and  policies,  should  adopt  en- 
lightened, modern  methods,  in  dealing  with  those 
from  whom  they  seek  favors,  instead  of  the  brutal, 
domineering  and  coercive  methods  of  primitive  tribal 
chiefs,  to  give  it  standing  with  men  jealous  of  their 
freedom.  They  appeal  to  prejudice  and  class  bias, 
instead  of  reason  and  common  sense  to  influence 
those  whom  they  desire  to  bring  into  their  organiza- 
tion. 

In  the  face  of  the  millions  of  dollars  given  every 
year  by  men  of  altruistic  instincts,  for  the  founding 
and  support  of  colleges,  libraries,  museums,  and 
laboratories,  unionism  has  nothing  to  offer  for  the 
common  good  but  a  growl  and  a  pinched  expression 
of  hate  and  envy  and  greed  of  its  leaders.  In  its 
leadership  it  nowhere  inculcates  thrift,  economy 
sobriety,  morality,  patriotism  and  respect  for  the 
laws  and  the  rights  of  others.  Its  leaders  are  ignor- 
ant, and  conceited  and  selfish  and  unsympathetic  and 


282  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

display  no  interest  in  the  common  welfare,  and  en- 
deavor to  keep  alive  their  primitive,  barbarous 
methods  after  the  people  generally  have  outgrown 
them.  Its  reckless  waste  of  the  efforts  and  energy 
of  its  members  by  those  who  control  and  direct  its 
principles  and  policies,  if  properly  husbanded,  would 
have  provided  an  insurance  fund  that  would  have 
amply  secured  the  families  of  deceased  members 
against  want  and  poverty,  and  supported  living 
members  in  old  age  and  during  periods  of  enforced 
idleness  caused  by  recurring  financial  and  industrial 
disturbances.  An  educational  campaign  should  be 
inaugurated  under  the  auspices  of  an  altruistic  fund 
to  expose  the  fallacies  and  wickedness  of  the  masters 
of  the  union  slavery  and  to  enlighten  the  minds  of 
the  members  of  labor  organizations  to  see  their  own 
interests,  which  are  always  bound  up  with  the  inter- 
ests of  the  community. 

Our  efforts  and  energy  are  rapidly  coming  into 
competition  with  the  efforts  and  energy  of  foreign 
nations  in  such  manner  that  we  cannot  afford  to  con- 
tinue the  reckless  waste  of  these  life  and  comfort- 
giving  forces,  which  are  being  dissipated  by  the 
dominance  of  union  labor  leaders.  If  we  are  to  hold 
our  place  in  the  world  as  a  nation  fit  to  live,  and  as 
approaching  nearest  to  ideal  social  conditions,  we 
should  regard  every  unit  or  foot-pound  of  energy 
expended  as  precious  as  grains  of  gold  to  be  treas- 
ured up  in  securing  life-giving  substances  and  com- 
forts. We  should  endeavor  to  arouse  among  the 
members  of  labor  organizations  a  spirit  of  investiga- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  283 

tion  that  will  tend  to  free  them  from  the  bondage 
and  grip  of  selfish  and  unprincipled  masters  who 
hold  nothing  before  them  but  a  plodding,  tread-mill 
kind  of  life,  and  the  knowledge  of  a  constant  ab- 
stracting of  their  wages  for  war  funds  for  the  sup- 
port of  strikers  and  the  masters  of  the  union  slav- 
ery who  have  a  dread  of  grinding  toil  and  sweat 
shops.  It  should  not  be  difficult  to  show  the  most 
intelligent  of  the  members,  that  there  has  never  been 
a  strike  that  filled  the  larder,  better  clothed  the 
children,  brightened  the  hopes  of  the  wife,  strength- 
ened the  individuality  and  independence  of  the 
father,  or  added  comforts  and  material  prosperity  to 
the  family.  We  believe  that  there  is  a  large  field 
of  usefulness  for  labor  organizations,  but  that  the 
field  of  usefulness  should  be  along  different  lines 
than  those  hitherto  followed,  which  have  made  their 
existence  depend  upon  trespassing  upon  the  rights  of 
others;  that  they  should  be  altruistic  in  character 
as  provided  in  the  Federal  statutes  giving  them  a 
legal  status,  instead  of  militant  and  supremely  selfish 
in  character.  Let  the  surplus  energy  of  the  members 
of  these  organizations  be  directed  to  securing  useful 
employment  for  their  more  unfortunate  brothers  and 
helping  them  in  various  ways  to  make  life  more  tol- 
erable and  worth  living,  and  this  too  without  inter- 
fering with  the  rights  of  other  men  to  work  for 
whom  and  under  such  conditions  as  suits  them. 
There  are  many  ways  in  which  we  can  be  like  sup- 
plementary eyes  and  ears  to  our  neighbors  and  more 
beneficial  to  them  than  by  giving  them  a  part  of  our 


284  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

substance.  Would  it  not  be  better  to  have  pointed 
out  to  us  methods  of  preventing  the  waste  of  our 
energies,  than  to  give  us  outright  the  amount  of  our 
wasted  energies  in  life-giving  necessities  and  com- 
forts? There  are  many  channels  into  which  the  sur- 
plus energy  of  labor  organizations  might  be  turned 
for  the  common  good,  instead  of  to  the  common 
injury  as  now.  The  burden  of  the  argument  of  labor 
agitators  has  been  that  there  is  eternal  war  between 
labor  and  capital,  a  fallacy  they  do  not  care  to  have 
corrected,  as  they  are  the  only  beneficiaries  from 
such  wars.  There  is  and  justly  so,  enternal  war  be- 
tween all  free  labor  and  capital  and  those  who  con- 
trol and  direct  the  principles  and  policies  of  factional 
labor,  or  organized  labor  to  the  end  of  securing  and 
holding  a  monopoly  of  all  labor,  for  this  less  than 
one-tenth  of  all  labor.  In  this  country  practically 
every  man  who  is  not  a  public  charge,  is  a  laborer, 
and  owns  some  capital,  and  according  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  labor  agitator  must  be  at  war  with  him- 
self. Where  shall  we  draw  the  line  between  the  pea- 
nut-vender and  the  man  of  millions  and  say  this 
man  is  not  a  capitalist  and  this  man  is?  All  labor 
may  be  regarded  as  an  expenditure  of  energy  di- 
rected to  accomplish  a  given  purpose,  and  may  be 
classed  as  useful  or  useless,  and  as  physical  or  men- 
tal. By  studying  the  transformation  and  equiva- 
lence of  forces  we  find  that  so  many  bushels  of  wheat 
or  corn  as  food  may  be  transformed  into  so  many 
units  of  energy,  and  that  so  many  units  of  energy 
may  be  transformed  into  so  many  bushels  of  corn 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  285 

or  wheat.  The  amount  of  energy  a  man  expends  in 
producing  a  bushel  of  wheat  or  corn,  may  be  ex- 
pended by  another  man  to  no  useful  purpose,  as 
sitting  on  a  drygoods  box  day  after  day  whittling  a 
stick,  or  in  haranguing  idle  loafers  to  hate  and  envy 
their  industrious  and  provident  neighbors.  The  man 
who  wastes  his  energy  day  after  day  must  live  on 
the  surplus  products  of  his  transformed  energy  in 
the  past,  or  on  the  transformed  energy  of  some  one 
else.  No  man  who  is  not  a  proper  burden  upon  the 
State,  in  this  country,  should  live  on  the  transformed 
energy  of  others. 

We  who  have  been  free  and  independent  workers 
all  our  lives,  and  who  ask  no  more  freedom,  no  more 
privileges,  no  more  liberty  of  action  than  we  are  will- 
ing to  concede  to  all  others,  and  who  are  many  times 
more  numerous  than  the  membership  of  organized 
labor,  challenge  a  comparison,  member  for  member 
in  the  different  trades  and  professions,  with  the  mem- 
bership of  organized  labor,  as  to  sobriety,  morality, 
patriotism,  property  interests,  and  all  those  elements 
which  make  for  good  citizenship.  Free  labor  claims 
that  it  can  and  does  make  a  better  showing  than  the 
membership  of  organized  labor  in  all  those  elements 
essential  to  our  progress  towards  an  ideal  social 
state.  Free  labor  also  claims  that  statistics  will  show 
that  the  free  and  independent  worker  has  greater 
respect  for  the  law,  greater  respect  for  the  keeping 
of  solemn  contracts,  greater  respect  for  the  equal 
rights  of  others,  and  provides  better  for  his  family 
in  the  way  of  owning  a  home  and  comforts  than 


286  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

those  who  have  surrendered  their  individuality,  inde- 
pendence and  freedom  to  their  masters  of  organized 
labor.  The  man  who  surrenders  his  independence 
and  industrial  freedom  to  a  slick-tongued  labor  agi- 
tator or  confidence  man,  on  a  showing  of  being  bene- 
fited by  the  injury  of  some  one  else,  may  be  a  good 
conscientious  man  in  many  respects,  but  such  men 
are  frequently  made  dangerous  instruments  of  op- 
pression when  under  the  influence  of  unprincipled 
and  ignorant  leaders.  We  believe  that  if  these  peo- 
ple who  have  been  induced  by  the  teachers  of  hate, 
envy  and  selfishness  to  surrender  their  independence 
and  freedom,  on  promise  of  receiving  in  return  sub- 
stantial benefits,  by  the  ruin  other  honest  men  could 
be  reached  and  impressed  with  the  rational  views 
which  govern  free  and  independent  workers,  that 
they  would  in  large  numbers  break  away  from  the 
thralldom  in  which  they  are  held  by  tyrannical  mas- 
ters who  have  robbed  and  deprived  them  of  millions 
of  dollars  of  their  earnings  for  years  without  giving 
them  the  promised  rewards  for  their  loyalty.  The 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  have  a  terrible  indict- 
ment constantly  facing  them,  if  they  would  but  see 
it  displayed  in  the  sad  countenances  of  the  wives 
and  husbands  in  thousands  of  homes  made  desolate 
by  the  ill-advised  strike,  by  the  quitting  of  employ- 
ment that  was  both  agreeable  and  remunerative,  at 
the  suggestion  of  a  walking  delegate  or  man  in  whom 
they  had  confided  their  most  vital  interests. 

No  matter  how  conscientious  and  honest  people 
may  be,  if  they  accept  bad  advice, — advice  which 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  287 

causes  them  to  ignore  and  attempt  to  trample  upon 
the  rights  of  others,  they  are  certain  to  bring  upon 
themselves  the  hard  conditions  they  were  ready  to 
impose  upon  others.  There  is  great  room  for  men  of 
altruistic  inclinations  to  assist  in  putting  before  such 
misguided  people  the  best  thought  of  the  great 
thinkers  of  the  world  in  regard  to  the  ideal  relations 
which  should  exist  between  men.  Only  by  an  aggres- 
sive campaign  of  education  will  it  be  possible  to  open 
the  eyes  of  members  of  labor  organizations  to  the 
folly  and  wickedness  of  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery  in  endeavoring  to  keep  them  in  darkness  in 
regard  to  their  true  interests  as  demanded  by  indus- 
trial freedom.  There  is  a  common  expression  that 
governments  are  about  as  good  as  the  average  of 
the  people  for  whom  they  exist,  which  means  that 
unionism  is  about  as  good  as  the  average  of  its  mem- 
bership. It  is  probably  true  that  the  government 
of  every  people  is  the  kind  that  they  require,  and 
that  they  would  not  tolerate  any  other  radically 
different.  The  Russian  people  for  instance,  have  not 
been  sufficiently  schooled  in  self-control,  toleration 
and  respect  for  each  others  rights  to  make  our  form 
of  government  acceptable  or  practicable  for  them. 
If  they  were  qualified  for  living  under  our  form  of 
government  they  would  soon  have  it.  And  so  we 
say  that  institutions  and  men  must  be  judged  by 
their  conduct,  as  to  how  far  they  are  fit  for  living 
under  ideal,  social  conditions. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

TRADE  SCHOOLS  TO  FURNISH  SKILLED 
LABOR. 

We  mean  by  Trade  School,  a  school  under  State 
or  municipal  control,  or  a  private  or  incorporated 
school,  equipped  for  teaching  the  trades,  and  whose 
function  it  is  to  teach  the  different  trades  to  young 
men  who  desire  to  prepare  themselves  for  certain 
trades  or  professions. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  manual  training  school 
is  different  from  the  trade  school  in  its  purposes 
and  aims,  in  this,  that  its  work  is  in  the  line  of  higher 
education.  Very  few  of  the  young  men  attending 
these  schools  have  any  thought  of  becoming  wage 
earners  in  any  of  the  skilled  trades.  It  is  the  aim 
and  purpose  of  the  trade  schools  to  make  the  young 
men  graduating  from  them  finished  and  skilled 
workmen  in  the  different  trades  they  have  chosen 
for  life  pursuits,  the  same  as  apprentices  who  served 
full  terms  under  masters  under  the  old  system. 

There  are  many  advantages  to  the  young  man 
who  graduates  from  the  trades  school  over  the  young 
man  who  serves  his  apprenticeship  under  a  master 
of  the  closed  shop  of  the  union  slavery.  A  young 
man  graduated  from  a  trade  school  over  which  daily 
waves  our  national  flag,  and  who  has  been  constantly 

288 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  289 

impressed  with  ideas  of  loyalty  to  our  Government, 
loyalty  to  the  community  in  which  he  lives,  loyalty 
to  himself  and  his  family,  and  who  feels  and  shows 
an  interest  in  the  common  welfare,  will  certainly  be 
more  acceptable  to  an  employer  than  a  young  man 
who  has  served  his  apprenticeship  under  a  master 
of  the  closed  shop  of  the  union  slavery,  with  the 
teachings  of  hate  for  the  employer,  hate  for  inde- 
pendent workmen,  hate  for  honest  work,  hate  for 
the  man  who  would  do  honest  work,  hate  for  the 
man  who  would  be  loyal  to  our  Government  and 
love  our  flag,  hate  for  the  man  who  would  be  loyal 
to  his  community,  and  feel  a  loyal  interest  in  the 
common  welfare,  and  who  has  been  particularly  im- 
pressed with  the  importance  of  the  methods  of  en- 
forcing the  demands  of  the  unions  by  strikes,  boy- 
cotts, picketing,  slugging  independent  workers,  and 
of  the  destruction  of  property. 

Even  if  the  closed  shops  of  the  unions  allowed  a 
sufficient  number  of  apprentices  to  supply  the  de- 
mands of  employers  for  skilled  labor,  which  they 
do  not,  there  is  still  objection  of  a  fair-minded  em- 
ployer to  using  that  kind  of  labor  graduated  from 
the  school  of  hate  and  selfishness  of  the  closed  shop, 
in  which  the  young  men  are  taught  like  aliens  to 
have  no  interest  in  common  with  the  community. 
The  young  men  turned  out  from  such  schools  are 
likely  to  be  much  more  efficient  organizers  and  man- 
agers of  strikes,  boycotts,  and  picketing,  than  effi- 
cient workmen  for  an  employer,  and  more  like  fire- 
brands than  messengers  of  peace. 


290  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

Why  should  any  employer  or  any  man  who  feels 
an  interest  in  the  common  welfare,  wish  to  encourage 
and  sustain  nurseries  of  crime  and  treason  of  the 
unions  even  if  they  did  turn  out  efficient  skilled 
workmen,  which  they  do  not?  Already  the  officials 
of  the  unions  are  beginning  to  see  the  handwriting 
on  the  wall,  and  are  endeavoring  to  secure  the  en- 
actment of  laws  to  prevent  the  discrimination  against 
the  inefficient  slave  labor  they  have  been  furnishing. 

For  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  wages  of  skilled 
labor  of  the  different  trades  above  the  normal  level, 
it  has  been  the  policy  of  union  officials  to  restrict 
apprenticeships  in  the  closed  shops  which  they  have 
dominated,  so  that  only  a  very  small  proportion  of 
young  men  to  the  number  of  journeymen  employed, 
have  been  allowed  to  learn  the  trades,  thus  making 
it  impossible  for  employers  to  secure  efficient  skilled 
labor  of  the  kinds  they  desired.  The  right  of  a  boy 
to  learn  the  trade  of  his  choice  should  be  as  free  to 
him  as  the  air  and  the  sunlight,  and  that  the  narrow 
selfish  policy  of  the  unions  in  barring  American  boys 
from  the  trades,  has  made  the  development  of  trade 
schools  a  necessity,  a  necessity  too,  that  must  tend 
to  the  elimination  of  the  nurseries  of  crime  and  trea- 
son of  the  closed  shops  of  the  unions. 

Think  of  the  heartless  selfish  greed  of  the  masters 
of  the  union  slavery,  who  deliberately  drive  Ameri- 
can boys  into  wasted  lives  and  crime  rather  than 
allow  them  to  exercise  their  natural  rights  to  learn 
trades  and  become  useful  citizens.  Let  any  one  who 
wishes  to  ascertain  the  causes  which  led  the  inmates 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  291 

of  the  penal  institutions  and  the  reformatories  of 
the  country  into  criminal  conduct,  inquire  of  the 
superintendents  of  these  institutions,  and  he  will  find 
that  investigations  show  that  about  ninety  per  cent, 
of  the  inmates  have  no  knowledge  of  any  of  the 
trades.  There  is  no  doubt  that  men  of  good  habits 
and  skilled  in  any  of  the  trades  can  always  find 
employment  at  good  wages,  and  are  not  as  likely  to 
form  criminal  associations  as  men  without  a  knowl- 
edge of  any  trade. 

While  we  are  all  deeply  interested  in  the  import- 
ance of  the  work  of  the  Institutes  of  Preventive 
Medicine,  and  in  the  laboratory  work  of  such  men  as 
Simon  Flexner  in  investigations  in  regard  to  im- 
munity from  diseases,  which  have  annually  swept 
away  thousands  of  our  race,  it  is  also  gratifying  to 
know  that  there  are  men  equally  earnest  in  their 
investigations  in  regard  to  the  causes  of  crime,  and 
the  remedies  for  the  prevention  of  crime.  It  is  the 
judgment  of  those  who  have  investigated  the  causes 
of  crime,  as  far  as  we  know,  that  they  regard  the 
surest  remedy  for  the  prevention  of  crime,  would 
be  to  have  our  boys  learn  useful  trades  and  profes- 
sions. It  is  a  strange  commentary  on  our  social  life 
when  thinking  men  of  altruistic  inclinations  should 
feel  obliged  to  protest  that  the  States  are  doing 
more  for  the  criminal  boy  who  is  sent  to  a  reforma- 
tory where  he  gets  his  board  and  clothing,  and  where 
he  is  put  to  learning  a  trade  that  will  make  him  self- 
supporting  when  he  gets  out,  than  they  are  willing 
to  do  for  the  boy  who  is  not  a  criminal,  and  who  is 


292  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

not  allowed  to  learn  a  trade  on  account  of  unionism 
gone  mad.  Through  the  pig-headedness  of  the 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  and  teachers  of  envy, 
hate  and  selfishness,  in  barring  our  American  boys 
from  the  trades,  many  of  these  boys  have  committed 
petty  offenses  that  will  send  them  to  reformatories 
where  they  get  their  board  and  clothing  and  a  chance 
of  learning  a  trade.  It  has  been  stated  that  foreign 
parents  in  some  of  our  cities,  having  become  ac- 
quainted with  the  advantages  of  this  scheme,  have 
encouraged  their  children  to  commit  petty  offenses, 
in  order  to  be  sent  to  the  reformatory,  and  after 
being  sent  there,  of  writing  them  and  urging  them 
to  learn  the  English  language  and  a  trade  so  that 
when  they  get  out  they  could  speak  good  English 
and  have  a  useful  trade. 

When  the  slavery  of  the  unions  has  become  so 
oppressive  under  its  masters  that  a  member  dare  not 
teach  his  own  trade  to  his  son,  it  is  time  that  the 
public  should  lose  patience  and  assert  its  rights; 
it  is  time  that  it  should  insist  on  giving  the  sons  of 
poor  parents  as  good  a  chance  to  learn  a  trade  that 
will  fit  them  for  earning  a  living,  as  the  boys  released 
from  reformatories  and  penal  institutions.  If  then 
the  want  of  knowledge  of  the  trades  has  been  a 
potent  factor  in  driving  so  many  of  the  youth  of  our 
country  into  wasted  and  criminal  lives,  as  criminal 
statistics  show,  we  have  it  in  our  power  by  establish- 
ing trade  schools  as  a  part  of  our  public  school  sys- 
tem, and  giving  every  boy  an  opportunity  of  learn- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  293 

ing  a  trade,  to  prevent  much  of  the  crime  chargeable 
to  this  educational  deficiency. 

The  old  system  of  apprenticeship  is  passing  away, 
and  the  trade  schools  afford  the  only  means  by  which 
employers  may  hereafter  secure  skilled  labor.  Now 
if  we  find  by  investigations  that  by  a  false  policy 
we  are  making  a  large  proportion  of  our  criminal 
population  out  of  good  material,  every  thinking  man 
of  altruistic  inclinations,  should  not  hesitate  in  lend- 
ing his  influence  to  correct  that  policy.  The  trade 
schools  for  turning  out  useful  skilled  workmen,  will 
be  bitterly  opposed  by  the  masters  of  the  union 
slavery,  who  fatten  on  the  earnings  of  the  members ; 
but  as  we  consider  the  host  more  important  than  the 
parasites,  the  opposition  and  protests  of  selfish  greed 
must  be  ignored.  All  progress  has  always  met  with 
opposition  and  always  will,  and  any  progressive 
measure  to  prove  its  fitness  to  live,  must  have  its 
struggle  with  and  destroy  the  influence  of  those  who 
champion  the  more  primitive  methods  and  measures. 

Conditions  have  so  changed  that  a  common  school 
education  furnished  by  our  public  school  system, 
which  was  sufficient  up  to  thirty  to  forty  years  ago, 
to  give  a  young  man  a  fair  chance  of  earning  a  live- 
lihood, is  no  longer  sufficient.  His  common  school 
education  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  a  trade  school 
education  that  will  graduate  him  a  skilled  workman 
in  the  trade  of  his  choice,  and  enable  him  to  at  once 
secure  remunerative  employment.  It  has  been  stated 
by  those  interested  in  the  success  of  the  trade 
schools,  that  there  is  a  job  ready  for  every  man  on 


294  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

graduation  as  a  skilled  workman  in  his  trade.  There 
is  cooperation  too,  between  employers  and  officials 
of  the  trade  schools  in  finding  employment  for  the 
skilled  workmen  turned  out  by  the  schools. 

Nearly  all  employers  of  skilled  labor  are  enthusias- 
tic believers  in  and  supporters  of  the  trade  schools, 
many  of  them  having  contributed  largely  in  their 
special  lines  in  the  equipment  of  these  schools,  so 
that  when  they  need  skilled  workmen  naturally  turn 
to  the  trade  schools  to  supply  them,  instead  of  to 
the  unions.  To  save  the  annoyance  from  having  to 
put  up  with  the  tainted  and  disloyal  and  inefficient 
skilled  labor  furnished  by  the  unions,  some  large 
employers  of  labor  have  established  their  own  trade 
schools  for  turning  out  their  own  skilled  workmen. 
This  generous  altruism  of  manufacturers  and  em- 
ployers of  labor  in  contributing  largely  to  industrial 
schools  and  in  establishing  trade  schools  to  enable 
young  men  to  learn  trades  of  their  choice,  without 
cost,  is  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  selfish  greed  of 
the  unions  in  requiring  their  members  to  pay  heavy 
fees  for  permission  to  work,  and  of  taking  a  heavy 
lien  on  every  man's  wages  while  he  continues  to 
work,  even  if  it  causes  the  suffering  of  his  wife  and 
children. 

When  the  union  officials  show  a  genuine  altruism 
by  seeing  to  it  that  not  one  cent  shall  be  taken  from 
the  wages  of  the  poor  members  and  diverted  from 
their  families  to  support  a  government  within  a  gov- 
ernment, with  its  expensive  staffs,  administrative 
departments,  delegate  conventions,  and  congressional 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  295 

lobbies,  they  will  no  longer  be  charged  with  using 
the  unions  as  a  scheme  for  robbing  and  extorting 
from  members  their  earnings  to  satisfy  selfish  greed 
and  vanity. 

A  young  man  graduating  from  a  trade  school  and 
starting  out  to  assume  the  responsibilities  of  life,  has 
many  advantages  from  his  teachings  of  respect  and 
loyalty  and  devotion  to  the  common  welfare,  which 
will  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  overcome  by 
the  workman  who  has  served  his  apprenticeship  in 
the  closed  shop  of  the  union,  with  the  general  teach- 
ings of  hate  for  everything  that  those  outside  of  the 
union  regard  as  good.  It  should  be  an  advantage  to 
a  young  man  for  his  prospective  employer  to  know 
that  his  life  up  to  his  graduation  was  passed  in  an 
environment  in  which  loyalty  to  our  government,  its 
laws,  its  flag,  and  its  courts,  loyalty  to  the  interests 
of  employers,  and  respect  for  the  equal  rights  of 
others,  were  taught  and  impressed  upon  his  mind. 
And  one  may  naturally  believe  that  it  would  be  a 
disadvantage  to  the  young  man  for  his  prospective 
employer  to  know  that  he  is  a  probable  trouble 
breeder,  in  as  much  as  his  life  during  his  apprentice- 
ship in  the  closed  shop  of  the  union  was  passed  in  an 
environment  in  which  the  teachings  of  envy,  hate 
and  selfishness  were  strongly  impressed  upon  his 
mind. 

There  are  other  advantages  in  favor  of  the  young 
man  graduated  from  the  trade  school  over  the  ap- 
prentice turned  out  as  skilled  workman  by  the  closed 
shop  of  the  union.  It  is  well  known  that  the  trade 


296  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

school  is  an  up-to-date  institution  equipped  with 
laboratories  and  scientific  technique,  whereas  the 
union  with  its  primitive  ideas  and  ideals  is  opposed 
to  progress  of  every  kind,  opposed  to  improved  ma- 
chinery methods  and  processes,  and  endeavors  to 
keep  the  apprentice  in  the  old  ruts  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, and  thus  if  not  unfitting  at  least  poorly  fitting 
him  for  handling  the  improved  machinery,  and  us- 
ing the  new  methods  and  processes,  which  are  being 
developed  along  with  our  advancing  civilization. 

Recently  two  young  men  who  were  printing  a 
daily  newspaper  in  Berkeley,  California,  on  an  old 
press,  purchased  and  set  up  a  new  and  improved 
power  press,  which  would  not  only  do  nearly  double 
the  work  of  the  old  press,  but  would  also  dispense 
with  the  services  of  two  helpers ;  yet  the  union  would 
not  permit  the  owners  to  use  the  new  press  except  on 
condition  of  employing  the  same  number  of  helpers 
as  were  employed  on  the  old  press.  Instead  of  mak- 
ing two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  one  had  grown 
before,  it  is  the  unalterable  policy  and  purpose  of 
the  unions,  to  make  one  blade  of  grass  grow  where 
two  had  grown  before. 

Every  man  of  common  sense  knows  that  the  manu- 
facturer who  sticks  to  the  old  machinery,  methods 
and  processes,  cannot  successfully  compete  with  the 
manufacturer  who  adopts  and  uses  the  newest  im- 
proved machinery,  methods  and  processes,  in  turning 
out  his  products  for  the  market.  And  the  manufac- 
turer who  puts  three  men  to  man  machinery  that  re- 
quires only  one  man,  cannot  successfully  compete 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  297 

with  the  manufacturer  who  distributes  his  help  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  his  machinery.  But  an 
intensely  selfish  alien  organization  like  the  union 
that  manifests  no  interest  in  the  common  welfare, 
cares  nothing  about  the  business  of  employers  being 
successful  so  long  as  its  own  selfish  greed  is  satisfied. 
An  employer  of  the  open  shop  who  uses  the  skilled 
labor  of  graduates  of  the  trade  school,  would  not 
have  this  trouble,  would  not  have  his  business  tied 
up  if  he  refused  to  employ  three  men  to  do  one  man 's 
work.  It  is  gratifying  to  know  that  some  of  the 
larger  trade  schools  of  the  country,  like  the  Winona 
Technical  Institute  of  Indianapolis,  are  receiving 
the  financial  support  and  encouragement  of  the  dif- 
ferent national  associations  of  employers  in  the  spe- 
cial departments  in  which  they  are  interested,  from 
which  they  desire  to  secure  skilled  labor.  These 
national  associations  of  employers  feeling  that  the 
trade  schools  are  the  only  means  by  which  they  will 
be  able  to  secure  skilled  labor,  have  contributed  gen- 
erously to  the  scholarship  funds  and  equipment  for 
teaching  the  trades  in  the  departments  in  which  they 
are  interested. 

For  instance  the  national  lithographers  associa- 
tion, contributed  two  thousand  dollars  to  the  scholar- 
ship fund  in  the  Winona  Institute,  and  put  in  sixteen 
thousand  dollars  worth  of  equipment  for  teaching  the 
trade  to  students  in  the  department  of  lithography. 
A  young  man  who  comes  to  the  Winona  Institute 
wishing  to  learn  a  trade,  and  who  has  not  the  money 
to  pay  his  tuition,  is  loaned  $100  out  of  the  scholar- 


298  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ship  fund  for  which  he  gives  his  unsecured  note  for 
ten  years  without  interest,  and  which  he  is  expected 
to  pay  in  installments  after  he  graduates  and  be- 
comes a  skilled  wage  earner.  The  officials  of  the  in- 
stitute report  that  the  young  men  who  have  been 
thus  helped  and  who  have  graduated  and  gone  out 
into  the  busy  world  to  earn  a  livelihood  are  making 
good  and  paying  off  their  notes,  some  of  them  hav- 
ing already  done  so. 

Many  manufacturers  and  employers  of  labor  in  the 
different  trades,  are  sending  their  sons  to  the  Winona 
Institute  that  they  may  be  taught  special  technical 
knowledge  to  fit  them  for  managing  the  business  of 
their  fathers  when  they  retire  or  become  incapaci- 
tated from  age  or  other  cause.  There  will  come  up 
many  questions  for  school  authorities  to  decide  in 
regard  to  industrial  education  in  connection  with  our 
public  school  system.  At  what  age  and  how  much  of 
the  time  of  the  boy  shall  be  given  to  industrial  edu- 
cation, and  the  extent  of  equipment  of  the  industrial 
school  in  which  the  trades  are  taught,  will  have  to 
be  considered. 

When  we  find  by  investigations  in  our  penal  insti- 
tutions that  the  want  of  a  knowledge  of  a  trade  has 
been  a  potent  factor  in  the  cause  of  crime,  we  are 
brought  to  a  realization  of  the  necessity  of  giving  the 
youth  of  our  country  an  industrial  education,  and 
fitting  them  for  the  different  trades  as  far  as  prac- 
ticable. There  should  no  longer  be  an  excuse  for 
parents  to  encourage  their  children  to  commit  petty 
crimes  in  order  that  they  may  be  sent  to  a  reforma- 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  299 

tory  where  they  will  get  their  board  and  clothing 
and  be  put  to  learning  a  trade.  With  the  trade 
schools  as  a  part  of  our  public  school  system,  they 
are  accessible  to  the  children  of  poor  parents  the 
same  as  the  public  school.  Nearly  all  men  have  a 
feeling  of  respect  and  loyalty  for  the  school  or  insti- 
tution that  sends  them  out  into  the  world  well 
equipped  for  meeting  the  requirements  and  responsi- 
bilities of  life.  This  is  an  asset  that  should  not  be 
lost  sight  of  in  preparing  young  men  for  useful 
trades  and  loyal  citizens  of  our  country,  loyal  citizens 
who  will  not  be  afraid  of  "  grinding  toil  "  and 
11  sweat  shops  "  as  described  by  those  who  never 
strike  or  never  sweat  and  live  on  the  fat  of  the  land 
by  absorbing  the  earnings  of  the  white  slaves  of  the 
union. 

We  are  constantly  finding  out  that  we  could  not 
make  a  better  investment  of  the  money  we  pay  into 
the  public  treasury,  than  spending  a  part  of  it  in  pre- 
paring our  youth  for  useful  trades  and  professions, 
instead  of  allowing  them  to  drift  into  wasted  or 
criminal  lives,  as  many  are  doing.  To  nearly  every 
boy  of  ten  to  twelve  years  of  age,  it  would  be  con- 
sidered a  desired  recreation  to  be  taken  from  the 
close  application  of  his  studies  for  an  hour  or  so  a 
day  for  instruction  in  the  use  of  tools  in  learning 
a  trade.  Every  man  of  mature  years  may  recall 
when  he  was  a  boy,  the  strong  desire  he  had  to  make 
things  like  those  with  which  he  was  familiar,  as 
wagons,  wheels,  boats,  mills,  if  he  could  only  get  the 
tools  and  materials  with  which  to  exercise  his  me- 


'  k& 

300  THE  WHITE  SMVE& 

chanical  bent  of  mind.  It  is  as  natural  for  a  boy  to 
want  to  make  something  that  has  long  been  in  use 
by  our  race,  as  it  is  for  dogs  to  play  in  mimic  the 
chasing,  catching  and  downing  their  prey.  There  is 
a  tendency  of  the  young  of  different  races  of  animals 
and  of  our  own  race  to  do  the  things  which  their 
parents  and  ancestors  were  in  the  habit  of  doing, 
and  which  were  necessary  to  be  done  in  the  preserva- 
tion of  life.  We  see  this  tendency  very  early  in  the 
lives  of  our  children,  as  little  girls  playing  house- 
keeping and  dressing  dolls  like  their  mothers,  and 
little  boys  playing  riding  horse  or  other  kinds  of  ac- 
tivities in  which  their  fathers  were  engaged.  These 
tendencies  of  children  are  nearly  all  along  useful 
lines  and  only  need  developing  as  the  children  grow, 
to  lead  to  useful  pursuits  and  useful  lives. 

The  unions  have  been  a  blight  and  more  destruc- 
tive to  business  interests  and  the  peace  of  communi- 
ties than  pestilence,  fire  or  earthquake,  where  they 
have  been  a  dominating  influence,  and  over  every 
union  headquarters  there  should  wave  a  yellow  flag 
to  warn  the  public  that  the  institution  covered  by 
its  folds  spreads  a  disease  worse  than  smallpox.  The 
masters  of  the  union  slavery  will  bitterly  oppose  the 
trade  school  and  everything  that  tends  to  promote 
the  welfare  of  the  community. 

Here  and  there  over  this  country  could  be  pointed 
out  towns  whose  business  interests  are  dead  and 
grass  growing  in  the  streets,  towns  which  a  few  years 
ago  were  prosperous  with  manufacturing  establish- 
ments employing  thousands  of  men  at  good  wages  to 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  301 

•s. 

support  their  families.  On  inquiring  as  to  the  cause 
of  so  many  idle  men  on  the  streets  in  tattered  cloth- 
ing, of  so  many  empty  houses,  and  of  so  little  busi- 
ness activity,  one  is  told  that  there  has  been  no  busi- 
ness since  the  big  strike;  that  the  manufacturers 
who  had  employed  thousands  of  men  had  either 
been  ruined  by  the  strike,  or  had  moved  their  plants 
to  some  other  town  on  account  of  the  strike  troubles. 
After  a  city  passes  through  a  strike,  if  it  has  not 
been  permanently  ruined,  it  takes  its  business  longer 
to  recuperate  than  after  having  passed  through  a 
pestilence  like  the  yellow  fever,  with  this  point  in 
favor  of  the  pestilence,  that  it  does  not  leave  the 
people  arrayed  against  each  other  in  bitter  antago- 
nism, like  the  unions.  Shall  an  organization  whose 
influence  is  more  disastrous  than  that  of  a  pestilence, 
fire,  or  earthquake,  be  permitted  to  stand  in  the  way 
of  trade  schools  for  fitting  American  boys  for  useful 
skilled  workmen  in  the  different  trades  and  thus  save 
them  from  criminal  and  wasted  lives? 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  EMPLOYERS' 
ASSOCIATIONS. 

If  the  members  of  labor  organizations  were  intel- 
lectually and  morally  able  to  stand  alone,  and  if 
they  were  able  to  measure  their  rights  by  the  equal 
rights  of  all  others,  and  to  limit  their  freedom  of 
action  by  the  like  freedom  of  action  of  all  others, 
they  would  not  surrender  their  independence  and 
freedom  and  become  slaves.  As  the  absolute  gov- 
ernment of  the  Czar  is  better  for  the  Russian  people 
than  no  government  or  anarchy,  so  the  moral  and 
intellectual  development  of  labor  organizations  is 
such  that  they  are  not  fit  for  that  form  of  govern- 
ment which  limits  the  freedom  of  each  by  the  like 
freedom  of  all.  Their  primitive  predatory  instinct 
is  so  strong,  and  their  moral  sense  so  weak,  that  laws 
are  required  to  restrain  them  from  trespassing  upon 
the  rights  of  others.  Their  increasing  aggressions 
and  oppressions  in  ignoring  the  rights  of  others,  and 
in  injuring  them  in  person  and  property,  have  be- 
come so  oppressive  and  intolerable  to  those  who  de- 
sire to  live  under  conditions  of  industrial  peace  and 
social  order,  that  they  have  been  obliged  to  organ- 
ize in  self  defence  and  to  insist  on  the  enforcement 
of  the  laws  which  were  enacted  to  restrain  the  law- 

302 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  303 

less  and  turbulent  elements.  It  has  gradually 
dawned  upon  the  minds  of  the  intelligent  and  pat- 
riotic classes  of  the  country,  that  the  perfect  organ- 
ization of  less  than  one-tenth  of  the  laboring  classes 
under  aggressive  leaders  who  displayed  no  interest 
in  the  common  welfare,  and  whose  sole  interest  ap- 
peared to  be  greed  and  power,  could  easily  dominate 
and  oppress  to  an  intolerable  extent,  the  other  nine- 
tenths  of  the  workers  who  were  not  organized.  In- 
deed the  situation  was  too  tempting  for  the  dem- 
agogue labor  agitators  to  overlook,  and  their  de- 
mands upon  their  helpless  victims  for  tribute  and  the 
surrender  of  the  management  of  their  business  in- 
creased with  every  concession  of  employers  of  or- 
ganized labor.  They  have  been  less  generous  to 
their  victims  than  the  Bedouins  of  the  desert,  who, 
after  taking  the  tribute  from  their  victims  of  the 
caravans  passing  through  their  country,  allowed 
them  to  depart  without  any  desire  to  utterly  ruin 
them. 

When  there  was  no  organization  of  merchants  and 
manufacturers  and  employers  of  labor  and  free  la- 
borers, it  was  easy  for  those  who  controlled  and 
directed  the  principles  and  policies  of  the  unions  to 
ruin  a  man  in  his  business  who  had  incurred  their 
displeasure,  by  the  strike  and  the  boycott.  But  now 
that  employers'  associations  and  industrial  alliances 
are  springing  up  all  over  the  country,  where  labor 
unions  exist,  we  may  look  for  industrial  troubles  to 
be  less  one-sided  in  the  future  than  they  have  been 
in  the  past.  These  associations  and  industrial  alii- 


304  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

ances  for  defence  against  the  common  enemy  of  in- 
dustrial peace,  social  order  and  equal  rights,  have 
already  made  their  influence  felt,  and  done  much  to 
check  the  unlawful  and  oppressive  aggressions  of 
labor  unions  on  personal  and  property  rights.  Before 
these  industrial  associations  and  alliances  came  into 
existence,  striking  unionists  in  the  large  cities  had 
almost  a  free  hand  in  the  destruction  of  property,  in 
picketing  the  plants  of  employers,  and  in  assault- 
ing those  known  or  suspected  of  being  opposed  to 
their  policies  and  methods,  because  nearly  every  one 
was  intimidated  by  the  fear  of  offending  them.  They 
might  satisfy  their  mad  desire  to  destroy  property 
and  make  assaults  without  hindrance  in  the  pres- 
ence of  many  witnesses  without  fear  of  arrest  and 
trial  because  witnesses  did  not  like  to  testify  against 
them.  Under  the  control  and  directions  of  their 
masters  they  have  frequently  set  up  reigns  of  terror 
and  carnivals  of  crime  in  our  cities  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  property  and  the  assaulting  and  murdering  of 
independent  workers  and  those  who  would  not  bow 
to  the  slavery  of  the  unions.  They  knew  that  no 
single  individual  dared  to  oppose  them  when  mem- 
bers of  the  organization  like  squads  of  soldiers  were 
assigned  to  do  certain  work  calculated  to  intimidate 
the  public.  But  now  that  their  enemy,  the  employers' 
and  manufacturers'  associations  have  commenced  or- 
ganizing for  defence,  and  for  aggressive  campaigns 
if  necessary,  and  will  be  able  to  strike  back,  giving 
blow  for  blow,  we  may  look  for  those  who  have 
been  all  powerful  in  defying  the  laws,  to  have  more 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  305 

respect  for  them  hereafter.  Indeed  they  have  al- 
ready commenced  to  show  more  caution,  for  they 
know  that  the  laws  which  were  made  for  the  protec- 
tion of  persons  and  property,  have  more  eyes  and 
ears  that  see  and  hear,  since  the  organization  of 
employers'  associations  and  alliances,  than  formerly, 
when  the  unions  had  no  organized  opposition  in  in- 
augurating a  reign  of  terror  and  anarchy.  It  is  well 
known  that  there  have  been  many  instances  of  the 
law  officers  catering  to  the  lawless  elements  of  the 
unions  in  times  of  strikes,  by  closing  their  eyes  to 
the  lawless  acts  of  the  strikers  and  their  sympa- 
thizers, with  the  tacit  or  avowed  understanding  with 
union  officials  of  receiving  in  return  the  friendship 
and  political  support  of  the  unions,  when  again  can- 
didates for  office.  But  now  with  the  organization  of 
employers'  associations,  which  stand  for  the  law  and 
order  elements  of  society,  politicians  will  find  that 
the  proponents  of  unionism  are  not  the  only  people 
to  be  reckoned  with.  Instances  could  be  named  in 
which  men  who  were  candidates  for  important  city 
offices,  and  who  openly  bid  for  the  union  support, 
were  badly  beaten  in  the  election,  and  that  they 
charged  their  defeat  to  the  activity  of  the  employers 
or  industrial  associations  because  the  candidates 
could  not  show  clean  hands  in  regard  to  the  enforce- 
ment of  law  and  order  in  times  of  industrial  dis- 
turbances. Let  it  become  known  that  these  em- 
ployers' associations  exist  for  the  purpose  of  giving 
the  law  better  eyes  and  ears  to  see  and  hear  and 
know  what  is  going  on  in  the  way  of  discharging  its 


306  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

proper  function  of  preserving  the  peace,  and  the 
criminally  inclined  would  likely  in  most  cases  hesi- 
tate before  plunging  into  crimes  that  would  certainly 
bring  upon  them  just  punishment. 

It  is  in  this  field  of  law  enforcement  in  the  turbu- 
lent times  of  strikes,  that  the  influence  of  employ- 
ers' associations  and  industrial  alliances  will  be  most 
usefully  felt  in  our  cities  where  the  unions  have 
hitherto  had  their  own  way.  There  is  an  antidote 
for  nearly  every  poison,  and  these  employers'  asso- 
ciations and  industrial  alliances  are  the  best  antidote 
that  could  be  prescribed  for  the  poison  with  which 
our  civilization  has  been  infected  by  those  who  con- 
trol and  direct  the  principles  and  policies  of  present- 
day  unionism.  The  remedy  is  so  simple  and  when 
properly  applied  so  effective,  that  doubtless  many 
intelligent,  thoughtful  men  who  have  suffered  from 
this  poisonous  growth  on  our  social  system,  have 
been  surprised  that  it  was  not  discovered  and  applied 
long  ago.  Think  of  the  outrages,  the  intimidations, 
the  assaults  upon  innocent  people,  the  murders,  the 
assassinations,  the  interference  with  the  burial  of 
the  dead,  the  persecutions  of  independent  workers 
and  their  families,  and  the  annual  loss  to  business 
enterprises  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  by 
the  industrial  wars  of  the  unions,  and  then  let  any 
intelligent  fair-minded  man  ask  himself  if  it  was  not 
time  to  look  around  for  an  antidote  to  counteract 
such  an  intolerable  state  of  affairs.  It  is  sometimes 
asserted  by  the  representatives  of  labor  organiza- 
tions that  there  is  nothing  in  their  constitutions  and 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  307 

by-laws,  that  requires  members  to  do  anything  that 
will  interfere  with  their  duties  as  good  citizens. 
While  this  may  be  true  of  some  of  the  unions,  we 
know  that  it  is  an  unwritten  law  of  unionism  to 
intimidate,  assault  and  injure  in  every  possible  man- 
ner, their  open  shop  competitors  when  ever  it  can  be 
done  with  safety.  If  unionism  as  now  known  by 
its  most  prominent  features,  honestly  required  its 
members  to  observe  the  laws  and  the  equal  rights  of 
others,  it  would  soon  go  out  of  business,  for  it  would 
have  nothing  to  offer  to  walking  delegates  and  thugs 
and  sluggers,  the  hyenas  of  society. 

We  call  an  organized  society  a  social  organism, 
for  it  has  differentiated  parts  that  perform  particular 
functions  necessary  to  its  existence,  like  the  differen- 
tiated parts  of  a  highly  developed  individual  organ- 
ism which  performs  particular  functions  necessary 
to  its  existence.  If  the  manufacturing  and  distribut- 
ing industries  of  this  country  should  become  badly 
crippled  from  any  cause,  the  farming  or  agricultural 
industries  would  in  a  short  time  feel  the  effect  and 
suffer.  And  then  if  the  farming  industry  should 
from  any  cause,  be  destroyed  for  a  single  season, 
not  only  the  manufacturing,  but  all  other  industrial 
enterprises  would  be  brought  to  a  standstill.  This 
leads  us  to  say  that  the  manufacturer,  the  merchant, 
the  employer  of  labor  and  independent  labor,  can 
get  along  and  prosper  without  the  unions,  but  that 
those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  unions,  the  parasites  of  the  unions, 
cannot  live  without  the  manufacturer,  the  merchant 


308  THE  WHITE  SLAVEKY 

and  the  employer  of  labor.  The  host  can  live  and 
thrive  without  the  parasite,  but  the  parasite  cannot 
live  without  the  host.  If  the  unions  are  something 
that  the  social  organism  can  do  without,  and  if  they 
are  a  general  detriment  and  nuisance  to  that  organ- 
ism, they  ought  to  die,  and  the  sooner  they  administer 
chloroform  to  themselves  the  more  commendable 
would  be  their  action.  As  they  make  no  pretensions 
of  standing  for  equal  rights  and  fairness,  and  dis- 
play no  interest  in  the  common  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity, no  earthly  interest  except  the  interests  of 
the  masters  who  never  strike  or  never  sweat,  would 
suffer  from  their  early  demise.  All  useless  parts  of 
an  organism  absorb  nourishment  required  for  the 
health  and  strength  and  usefulness  of  all  other  parts, 
and  are  to  that  extent  detrimental  to  it.  So  unionism, 
a  useless  part  of  the  social  organism,  absorbs  and 
wantonly  destroys  nourishment  that  should  go  to 
nourish  and  strengthen  all  the  useful  parts  of  that 
organism.  Anything  we  can  do  without,  and  are  in 
every  respect  better  off  without,  is  a  waste  and  detri- 
ment to  us  to  have  or  use.  We  find  that  unionism 
cannot  even  justify  its  existence  on  the  ground  that 
it  is  a  luxury  to  the  employer.  Let  us  call  an  em- 
ployer and  question  him. 

Mr.  Employer,  the  representatives  of  the  unions 
state  that  they  are  a  luxury  to  you  employers, 
What  have  you  to  say  about  it? 

Employer.  If  breaking  a  contract  and  leaving  me 
in  the  midst  of  a  piece  of  work  I  had  employed  union 
men  to  do,  causing  me  serious  loss  and  inconvenience, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  309 

is  a  luxury;  if  destroying  my  property  and  intimi- 
dating and  asaulting  my  loyal  and  faithful  employees 
who  live  up  to  their  contracts  and  do  not  try  to  give 
me  a  dishonest  day's  work  for  an  honest  day's  wages, 
is  a  luxury,  then  the  unions  are  a  luxury. 

All  wild  cattle  need  horns  for  offense  and  defense ; 
but  our  domestic  cattle  do  not  need  horns,  and 
among  most  breeders  perhaps,  horns  are  considered 
useless  parts  and  detrimental  to  all  animals  of  the 
herd.  We  are  now  breeding  cattle  without  horns,  and 
we  could  in  a  little  while  if  desired,  have  all  our 
cattle  bred  hornless.  So  unionism  represents  that 
primitive  form  of  government  when  every  tribe  had 
a  chief,  and  when  every  man  was  a  warrior  and 
his  own  weapon  maker,  and  when  right  as  we  under- 
stand it  had  no  meaning.  But  we  as  a  nation  have 
passed  beyond  that.  We  have  an  army  and  navy 
to  do  our  fighting  for  us  if  our  corporate  existence 
is  threatened,  and  policemen  and  constables  and  sol- 
diers to  preserve  the  peace  if  threatened  by  internal 
enemies.  Now  as  the  unions  are  as  useless  a  part  of 
the  civilized  social  organism  as  horns  are  to  domestic 
cattle,  we  shall  after  awhile  develop  a  race  of  men 
without  the  useless  horn  of  unionism.  We  are  glad 
to  note  that  the  employers'  associations  and  indus- 
trial alliances  are  dehorning  the  unions  and  depriv- 
ing them  of  the  power  of  being  as  harmful  as  form- 
erly, and  by  the  time  they  are  all  dehorned  a  race  of 
men  will  likely  grow  up  without  the  useless  union 
horn. 

After  the  long  struggle,  in  the  course  of  evolution, 


310  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

for  individual  freedom  and  equal  rights  of  all  classes 
of  our  people;  after  securing  the  enactment  of  laws 
guaranteeing  individual  freedom  and  equal  rights 
among  all  classes,  and  then  to  have  an  organization 
come  into  existence  for  the  avowed  purpose  of  limit- 
ing individual  freedom  and  of  denying  to  those  out- 
side its  ranks  the  right  to  work  for  whom  and  under 
such  conditions  as  they  may  see  fit,  is  not  only  trea- 
son, but  worse  than  the  treason  of  Benedict  Arnold. 
Those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  unions  should  not  complain  when  they 
are  told  and  made  to  feel  that  they  are  looked  upon 
by  nearly  all  except  a  small  fraction  of  our  people 
as  traitors  to  our  country,  traitors  to  justice  and 
equal  rights,  and  traitors  who  would  nullify  our  laws 
which  guarantee  to  all  equal  rights  to  life,  liberty 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  for  the  purpose  of 
building  up  a  class  with  special  privileges  who  would 
dictate  to  all  business  men  how  they  shall  carry  on 
their  business,  and  whom  they  shall  employ,  with 
heavy  fines  and  penalties  for  disobedience  of  their 
orders.  There  is  danger  in  the  insidious  attacks  of 
the  masters  of  the  union  slavery  on  our  government 
in  their  efforts  to  establish  a  class  of  special  priv- 
ileges, from  the  fact  that  their  attacks  are  made 
under  the  false  pretense  of  endeavoring  to  better 
labor  conditions.  We  should  not  be  deceived  by  this 
pretense  of  the  masters  of  the  union  slavery,  who 
are  endeavoring  to  establish  a  class  of  special  priv- 
ileges, for  we  see  every  day  that  their  action  tends 
not  only  to  limit  individual  freedom,  but  to  crush  all 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  311 

who  are  opposed  to  their  faction  and  its  methods. 
It  is  sometimes  asserted  by  those  who  would  extenu- 
ate the  treasonable  conduct  of  the  masters  of  the 
union  slavery  that  they  are  honest  and  conscientious 
in  their  efforts  on  behalf  of  labor.  This  may  be  true 
in  isolated  instances,  and  still  not  lessen  the  culpa- 
bility and  treasonable  effects  of  their  actions.  In  his 
History  of  Civilization  in  England,  Mr.  Buckle  has 
shown  that  those  who  kindled  the  fires  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion and  who  applied  the  rack  and  thumbscrew  and 
other  refined  methods  of  torture  and  consigned  to 
the  flames  those  who  differed  with  them  in  matters 
of  religion,  were  honest,  conscientious  men,  and  did 
their  terrible  work  in  behalf  of  religion.  Nearly 
all  the  persecutions  of  one  class  of  men  by  another, 
of  which  we  have  any  account,  have  been  in  the  name 
of  some  sacred  cause.  No  cause,  or  principle,  should 
be  held  sacred  or  venerated,  that  does  not  limit  the 
freedom  of  each  by  the  like  freedom  of  all.  We  would 
not  by  law  or  custom  give  any  man  a  special  privilege 
that  would  give  him  an  advantage  over  other  men  in 
the  struggle  for  life,  as  unionism  is  constantly  doing. 
There  can  be  no  cause  more  sacred  and  more  entitled 
to  our  veneration  and  respect,  than  the  cause  of 
labor;  but  those  who  would  trample  in  the  dust  the 
equal  rights  of  others  because  they  do  not  join  the 
union  to  secure  a  monopoly  of  labor,  are  no  friends 
of  labor,  but  the  friends  of  a  privileged  class  who 
ask  more  than  they  are  willing  to  concede.  It  is 
admitted  on  all  sides  that  civilization  has  grown 
out  of  conditions  when  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a 


312  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

recognition  of  rights,  equal  rights  among  men,  and 
that  this  recognition  has  been  a  matter  of  slow 
growth,  so  slow  indeed  that  in  most  civilized  coun- 
tries there  are  many  yet  in  whom  it  is  but  slightly 
developed.  So  far  as  this  sentiment  of  equal  rights 
is  concerned,  there  appears  to  be  abundance  of  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  proponents  of  unionism  have 
never  advanced  beyond  that  state  of  the  primitive 
man  when  fear  was  the  only  restraining  influence 
that  controlled  his  actions.  In  the  face  of  these  facts 
an  organization  like  the  employers'  associations  that 
stands  for  law  and  order  and  the  civilizing  influences 
of  the  times,  has  become  a  necessity  in  checking  the 
lawlessness  of  unionism.  The  selfish  and  unsympa- 
thetic nature  of  unionism  would  never  have  abol- 
ished African  slavery  for  fear  that  the  labor  of  the 
freedmen  would  have  come  into  competition  with 
union  labor.  And  in  this  respect  it  has  been  a  slave 
to  its  own  fears  that  it  would  suffer  from  the  free- 
dom of  others,  just  as  the  slave  owners  were  slaves 
to  their  fears  that  they  would  suffer  by  the  freedom 
of  their  slaves.  In  all  unionism  it  has  never  pro- 
duced a  man  big  enough  to  see  that  no  legitimate 
interest  will  ever  suffer  from  the  largest  possible 
measure  of  individual  freedom  consistent  with  the 
equal  freedom  of  all.  It  has  never  been  able  to  un- 
derstand that  it  has  been  by  the  independence  and 
assertion  of  individual  rights  to  industrial  and  com- 
mercial freedom,  for  which  the  employers'  associa- 
tions stand,  that  the  wasteful  and  destructive  prac- 
tices of  the  unions  have  been  tolerated.  It  has  never 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  313 

been  able  to  see  that  those  who  do  not  assert  their 
own  independence  and  individuality,  will  never  de- 
mand the  freedom,  independence  and  equal  rights 
of  others.  Its  leaders  with  few  exceptions  have  been 
of  that  kind  who  are  always  tuned  to  catch  the 
applause  of  the  most  vicious  and  turbulent  and  least 
reasoning  elements  of  the  community.  We  are  told 
by  travellers  that  the  Yakutes,  a  tribe  in  northern 
Siberia,  very  low  in  the  human  scale,  when  food  is 
plentiful,  gorge  themselves  with  thirty  to  forty 
pounds  of  meat  and  blubber  at  a  single  feasting  and 
then  lie  dormant  or  in  a  hybernating  condition  for 
two  or  three  weeks  to  a  month.  So  we  find  pessi- 
mistic unionism  feasting  and  gorging  itself  to-day, 
and  starving  to-morrow,  taking  no  thought  in  times 
of  plenty  to  provide  for  its  wants  in  the  future.  On 
account  of  the  tyrannical  and  unreasonable  demands 
of  those  who  control  and  direct  the  principles  and 
policies  of  the  unions,  with  the  accompanying  turbu- 
lence and  want  of  respect  for  the  rights  of  others, 
and  the  growing  inefficiency  of  union  labor,  it  is 
getting  more  and  more  to  be  an  undesirable  kind  of 
labor.  If  an  employer  cannot  use  such  labor  with- 
out a  strong  probability  of  sustaining  a  loss  from 
its  constant  belligerent  and  quarrelsome  attitude  and 
disloyalty  to  his  interests,  he  will  do  all  in  his  power 
to  get  along  without  it.  These  chronic  disturbers 
of  social  order  and  industrial  peace  he  dreads  and 
will  have  as  little  to  do  with  them  as  possible.  Those 
who  are  able  to  see  the  greater  respect  all  men  out- 
side the  unions  have  for  each  others  rights  in  this 


314  THE  WHITE  SLAVEKY 

country,  than  they  had  fifty  years  ago,  and  the 
greater  diffusion  of  altruism  than  then  existed,  will 
have  faith  in  our  continued  progress  towards  higher 
ethical  standards,  which  must  gradually  have  the 
effect,  with  the  restraining  influence  of  employers' 
associations,  of  eliminating  the  unionism  which  has 
become  a  school  of  hate  and  crime  and  special  priv- 
ileges. 

From  the  earliest  times  in  which  men  were  divided 
into  opposing  groups,  about  equal  attention  has  been 
given  to  developing  the  best  methods  of  attack  and 
defense  in  war  and  in  games,  the  prize  aimed  at 
always  being  ascendancy,  predominance.  To  meet 
the  attacks  of  stronger  and  aggressive  tribes,  weaker 
tribes  have  endeavored  to  make  up  for  their  weak- 
ness by  strategy  and  skill,  and  planned  the  ambush 
and  sometimes  destroyed  their  more  powerful  enemy. 
And  so  on  down  to  the  construction  of  our  modern 
battleships,  if  one  nation  produces  a  battleship  with 
armor  plate  of  a  thickness  and  resisting  power  that 
no  projectile  has  been  able  to  penetrate,  inventors  go 
about  experimenting  with  high  power  explosives 
until  they  get  a  projectile  that  will  penetrate  it. 
But  if  any  nation  sticks  to  its  ancient  methods  of 
attack  or  defence  too  long,  it  must  yield  to  the  more 
progressive  nations  such  ascendency  and  supremacy 
as  it  may  have  once  held.  And  so  we  say  of  union- 
ism, it  must  drop  its  primitive  ideals  of  force  and 
harshness  and  supreme  selfishness  in  dealing  with 
those  outside  its  ranks,  or  it  must  gradually  become 
an  obsolete  and  decadent  force  in  the  affairs  of  an 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  315 

enlightened  and  progressive  people.  It  has  perhaps 
served  the  useful  purpose  of  showing  in  a  convincing 
manner,  that  the  employing  classes,  the  progressive 
classes,  must  organize  for  defence  against  the  tyran- 
nies and  oppressions  of  selfish  men  controlling  the 
organized  factions  of  the  classes  seeking  employment. 
The  unions  on  account  of  their  general  pessimistic 
views  of  life,  and  primitive  ideals  in  sticking  to 
ancient  methods  and  processes,  and  in  resisting  the 
introduction  of  improved  machinery,  methods  and 
processes,  must  rapidly  become  an  obsolete  and  de- 
cadent force,  must  destroy  themselves  in  blindly 
attacking  scientific  and  progressive  forces  of  the  age, 
which  are  being  utilized  to  further  the  happiness  and 
well  being  of  mankind,  forces  which,  when  properly 
interpreted  must  tend  to  strengthen  the  ties  that  bind 
men  together  of  the  same  race  in  common  fellowship 
and  interests.  Even  men  of  ordinary  intelligence  are 
beginning  to  see  that  we  need  more  progressive  men 
of  broad,  rational  sympathies,  who  are  willing  to  de- 
vote their  energies  to  building  up  and  strengthening 
our  social  structure,  and  fewer  men  of  cold,  selfish, 
unsympathetic  natures  like  the  leaders  of  organized 
labor,  who  are  obstructionists  and  destructionists 
of  everything  progressive  in  our  civilization,  and  who 
insist  on  using  ancient  methods,  machinery  and  tools 
long  after  they  have  become  obsolete. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
SYMPOSIUM  ON  SOCIALISM. 

Two  honest  toilers  returning  from  work  in  the 
evening  pass  a  store  on  the  way  home,  and  notice  a 
man  of  unkept  appearance  sitting  on  a  box  whit- 
tling and  talking  to  two  or  three  other  men  who  look 
like  tramps.  In  passing  and  repassing  the  store  the 
two  workers  had  often  noticed  the  same  man  sitting 
or  standing  about  the  store,  or  in  the  neighborhood, 
whittling  and  talking  to  and  entertaining  about  the 
same  kind  of  audience.  The  two  toilers  were  not  in 
the  habit  of  loitering  on  the  way,  for  when  their 
day's  work  was  done,  their  thoughts  turned  to  their 
modest  homes  and  the  affectionate  greetings  of  their 
wives  and  children.  Their  attention  having  been 
drawn  to  the  persistent  whittler,  one  of  the  workers, 
said  to  the  other,  "  the  steadiness  with  which  the 
man  whittles  should  not  take  him  many  months  to 
whittle  up  a  cord  of  wood,  and  that  his  knife  handle 
would  likely  callous  or  blister  his  hands."  And  he 
further  added,  "  I  would  rather  do  the  work  we  have 
been  doing  than  the  whittling  that  fellow  has  done. 
I  do  not  see  how  he  makes  a  living  whittling  all  the 
time.  I  could  not  support  my  wife  and  children  and 
keep  up  our  home  by  sitting  around  day  after  day 
whittling  and  talking  to  idle  loafers,  as  he  has  been 

316 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  317 

doing.  I  heard  that  he  was  a  socialist.  Let  us  listen 
to  him  a  moment  talking  to  those  fellows  who  seem 
to  be  taking  in  all  he  says.  One  of  them  I  know  by 
reputation.  He  is  weak-minded  and  has  been  in  an 
asylum  on  account  of  a  vicious  tendency  to  steal  and 
set  fire  to  property.  The  other  fellows  look  like  they 
are  barely  responsible  for  their  conduct,  and  the 
whittling  philosopher  looks  like  he  had  only  a  shade 
the  advantage  of  his  audience,  and  that  the  shade  of 
advantage  was  in  the  gift  of  loquacity.  Hear  him 
expounding  the  socialist  philosophy  to  his  audience. ' ' 
In  his  talk  the  socialist  philosopher  went  on  to  say 
that  "  no  free  man  can  be  a  wage  slave;  that  all 
men  who  work  for  wages  are  wage  slaves;  that  the 
two  men  who  pass  and  repass  the  store  every  day, 
with  their  dinner  pails,  going  to  and  returning  from 
their  work,  and  live  in  the  pretty  cottages  on  Labor 
Street,  are  wage  slaves,  and  robbers,  and  when  social- 
ism gets  into  power,  those  pretty  cottages  they  live 
in  will  belong  to  all  men,  and  men  who  refuse  to  be 
wage  slaves  will  live  in  them."  After  thanking  his 
audience  for  applause,  the  socialist  philosopher  went 
on  to  ask  the  question,  "  why  are  we  obliged  to  beg 
or  steal  and  live  on  husks  to  get  enough  to  eat  to 
barely  satisfy  the  demands  of  hunger?  You  know 
the  reason.  It  is  because  if  we  give  up  our  freedom 
and  work  for  wages,  we  become  wage  slaves,  and  if 
one  man  works  for  another  he  becomes  a  wage  slave 
of  that  other.  This  proposition  of  having  free  men 
work  for  other  men  to  make  them  richer  is  a  great 
scheme.  Think  of  it.  We  spurn  the  proposition. 


318  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

We  will  have  no  such  slavery,  besides  we  have  no 
tools  with  which  to  work,  for  the  rich  men  own  all 
the  tools,  all  the  land,  all  the  mines.  We  saw  in  the 
papers  where  we  could  get  tools  free  with  which  to 
work,  but  this  is  a  scheme  of  the  rich  men  and  the 
wage  slaves  to  get  us  to  give  up  our  freedom  to  make 
other  men  rich.  Look  at  the  soft  hands  of  the  rich 
men,  the  clerks  and  business  men,  showing  that  they 
do  no  hard  work,  and  then  look  at  our  hands,  the 
horny  handed  sons  of  toil,  and  then  look  at  my  cal- 
loused hand.  Look  at  the  good  clothes  the  rich  men 
and  wage  slaves  wear,  and  the  plenty  of  good  things 
they  have  to  eat,  and  then  look  at  the  patched  cloth- 
ing we  have  to  wear,  and  the  poor  food  we  have  to 
put  up  with.  When  socialism  does  way  with  all  this 
inequality  and  all  the  clothing  and  all  the  food  and 
all  the  houses  shall  belong  to  all  men,  we  will  wear 
as  good  clothes  and  have  as  good  things  to  eat  and 
live  in  as  good  houses  as  the  rich  men  and  the  wage- 
slaves.  Our  big  men  who  know  all  about  the  science 
of  socialism,  sympathize  with  poor  fellows  like  us, 
and  when  they  get  into  power,  they  propose  to  take 
all  the  pretty  houses  like  those  on  the  terrace  on 
Labor  street,  and  give  them  to  all  men  with  plenty 
of  good  things  to  eat  and  plenty  of  good  clothes  to 
wear.  Some  of  the  wage  slaves  who  work  for  the 
rich  to  make  them  richer,  get  offended  to  call  them 
wage  slaves,  but  they  are  wage  slaves  all  the  same, 
for  the  rich  men  have  all  the  work  for  them  and 
own  all  the  tools  and  get  all  the  wealth  their  labor 
produces.  You  saw  that  wage  slave  who  came  in 


THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY  319 

town  just  now  with  a  load  of  wheat  to  sell  to  the 
elevator  man  who  wears  good  clothes,  to  make  him 
richer.  The  wage  slave  with  the  wheat  may  think 
that  he  owns  the  farm  he  calls  his,  but  he  does  not, 
for  all  he  raises  on  it  except  the  little  that  he  and 
his  family  eat,  he  hauls  to  town  to  make  the  rich 
men  richer.  When  under  socialism  all  men  own  all 
the  land,  all  the  farms,  and  all  the  tools,  we  will  get 
what  is  coming  to  us,  and  fare  as  well  as  the  rich 
and  the  wage  slaves.  All  free  men  who  would  not 
be  wage  slaves,  should  work  only  a  few  hours  each 
day  and  have  plenty  of  rest.  Do  you  want  to  be  a 
wage  slave?  Of  course  you  do  not.  No  socialist 
wants  to  be  a  wage  slave.  You  saw  the  two  men  stop 
there  a  few  moments  ago  with  their  dinner  pails  on 
their  way  home,  but  who  have  stepped  out  of  sight. 
Well,  they  are  wage  slaves  and  live  in  the  pretty 
cottages  on  the  terrace  on  Labor  street.  They  think 
that  they  own  the  houses,  but  they  do  not.  The 
houses  belong  to  all  men.  They  are  the  kind  of  wage 
slaves  who  talk  about  their  families  and  of  the  love 
and  affection  of  their  wives  and  children,  as  if  they 
were  all  that  makes  life  worth  while.  The  family. 
What  nonsense  to  make  an  ado  about  the  family. 
We  socialists  are  not  bothered  about  the  family. 
That  is  a  part  of  the  competitive  or  wage  slave  sys- 
tem. One  woman  is  as  good  as  another  to  us,  and 
if  children  come  by  association  of  the  sexes,  there 
would  be  a  home  for  them  where  they  would  be  taken 
care  of  as  children  of  the  community.  Why,  we 
take  a  calf  from  its  mother  at  a  few  weeks  old,  and 


320  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

they  both  get  along  just  as  well  as  if  they  were 
allowed  to  remain  together  until  the  calf  was  half 
grown.  No  one  but  the  rich  and  wage  slaves  would 
have  a  wife  and  children  tied  to  him  all  the  time. 
When  children  are  brought  up  in  a  home  under  so- 
cialist teachings  and  influences,  what  will  they  care 
about  mother  and  father  and  a  home  ?  As  free  men 
we  have  got  to  get  rid  of  the  false  notions  about  the 
sacredness  of  the  family,  and  that  it  is  necessary  to 
satisfy  the  parental  and  filial  instincts." 

The  two  toilers  having  changed  to  a  position  of 
rest  out  of  sight  of  the  socialist  philosopher,  heard 
his  discourse  through  on  the  family,  and  then  started 
home.  "  Well,  we  have  heard  socialism  expounded 
on  several  important  questions, "  exclaimed  one  of 
the  toilers  to  the  other,  "  and  what  do  you  think 
of  it?"  The  companion  replied  "that  he  did  not  see 
how  any  sane  man  would  think  well  of  it.  If  the 
man  and  his  audience  are  a  good  illustration  of  so- 
cialism, one  is  naturally  led  to  inquire  whether  such 
men  must  not  be  supported  by  the  labor  of  wage 
slaves,  or  some  other  kind  of  slaves  ?  Would  they  be 
less  idle  and  shiftless  under  a  socialist  regime,  than 
under  a  competitive  system  of  individual  freedom 
where  every  man  profits  according  to  his  efficiency 
in  providing  life-giving  necessaries  and  comforts,  as 
in  the  natural  order?  If  this  class  of  people  were 
more  useful  to  society  under  socialism  than  under 
the  competitive  system,  there  would  evidently  have 
to  be  agents  of  the  social  aggregate  whose  business 
would  be  to  see  to  it  that  suth  men  performed  their 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  321 

part  for  the  general  welfare.  They  would  not  do 
their  part  in  providing  for  the  general  stock  of 
necessaries  and  comforts,  stored  in  the  common  crib, 
without  agents  of  the  governing  power  to  look  after 
them  and  make  them  work.  Socialism  then  presup- 
poses a  system  of  bosses,  overseers,  or  regulating 
agents  of  the  governing  power,  whose  business  would 
be  to  see  to  it  that  the  idle  and  lazy,  like  the  social- 
ist whittler  and  his  audience,  should  do  their  part  in 
providing  for  the  general  welfare ;  to  see  to  it  that  the 
members  of  all  crafts  or  trades,  do  their  duty ;  to  see 
to  it  that  all  house- wives  or,  women  assigned  to 
household  duties,  keep  their  houses  or  kitchens  in 
proper  order  under  pain  of  chastisement,  as  under 
the  socialist  government  of  the  Ynca  civilization. 
What  evidence  have  we  that  under  a  socialist  form 
of  government  the  army  of  overseers  or  agents  of  the 
governing  power  appointed  to  supervise  the  affairs 
of  the  humbler  members,  would  not  be  as  tyrannical 
and  overbearing  as  the  state  appointees  for  such  pur- 
poses, as  under  past  socialist  regimes  ?  What  redress 
would  a  poor  craftsman  or  housekeeper  have  if 
knouted  by  an  officer  of  the  socialist  commonwealth 
who  carried  with  him  on  all  occasions  the  emblem  of 
authority  and  punishment?  He  would  have  none, 
and  the  idle  and  lazy,  of  which  there  would  be  many, 
when  made  to  work  by  the  generous  application  of 
the  knout,  could  hardly  boast  of  being  free  men,  or 
any  better  off  than  wage  slaves.  Every  department 
of  the  socialist  government  would  have  its  numerous 
bosses  or  agents  of  the  ruling  power,  to  enforce  its 


322  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

regulations  and  to  see  that  each  worker  performed 
his  duty  according  to  prescribed  forms.  According 
to  socialist  teachings  we  are  wage  slaves  because  we 
work  for  a  man  or  company  for  wages,  and  for  all  he 
knows  we  may  be  silent  partners  in  the  business ;  we 
are  robbers  because  we  have  saved  enough  from  our 
wages  to  build  modest  homes,  and  we  are  awful  bad 
men  because  we  have  hired  men,  brick-layers,  car- 
penters and  plumbers,  to  build  our  houses.  How  can 
a  sane  man  believe  in  a  doctrine  that  would  take 
from  another  the  home  and  comforts  he  has  won  by 
honest  toil  and  give  them  to  all  men  whether  they 
work  or  not?  If  a  man  shall  not  have  the  fruit  of 
his  own  toil,  what  stimulus  is  there  for  him  to  work  ? 
It  is  easy  to  see  how  socialism  may  be  attractive  to 
two  classes  of  men,  those  whose  ambitions  lead  them 
to  wish  to  be  bosses  to  drive  other  men  to  work,  and 
those  who  have  not  force  of  character  strong  enough 
to  urge  them  to  work  on  their  own  motion.  Those 
who  are  weak-minded  and  of  little  force  of  char- 
acter, and  those  who  wish  to  be  bosses  to  control 
them,  are  able  to  make  enough  noise  to  convince 
many  people  that  they  are  the  most  numerous  class. 
You  remember  we  heard  the  socialist  philosopher  tell 
his  audience  that  they  had  no  tools  with  which  to 
work,  and  refer  to  the  soft  hands  of  the  rich  men 
who  he  alleged  did  not  work,  and  then  draw  atten- 
tion to  his  own  calloused  hand.  Why  if  he  was  not 
afraid  of  being  a  wage  slave  by  working  for  another 
man,  he  could  earn  enough  in  a  few  hours  to  buy  any 
tools  he  would  need.  And  as  to  his  calloused  hand, 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  323 

the  fellow  got  that  in  whittling,  an  expenditure  of 
energy  no  use  to  any  one.  The  amount  of  energy 
wasted  in  whittling  and  teaching  weak-minded  men 
to  hate  work  for  fear  of  becoming  wage  slaves, 
would,  if  turned  into  useful  channels,  have  bought 
him  a  home  and  comforts.  Think  of  the  teachings 
of  socialism  that  he  and  such  idlers  have  as  good  a 
right  to  our  homes  as  we  have,  who  have  worked  for 
them  ?  He  was  as  free  as  we  were  to  work  and  have 
a  home  if  he  wanted  one.  Even  in  the  animal  world, 
we  see  every  day  that  the  efficient  profit  by  their 
efficiency,  and  that  the  inefficient  lose  by  their  ineffi- 
ciency. This  seems  to  have  been  the  law  of  all  life 
in  the  course  of  evolution,  and  no  other  law  would 
be  just.  A  reversal  of  this  law  would  mean  the  ex- 
tinction of  all  life.  In  a  socialist  commonwealth 
where  the  people  would  be  divided  into  a  governing 
and  governed  class,  as  they  have  been  in  all  past 
socialist  societies,  one-half  would  be  employed  in 
making  the  other  half  work,  like  in  a  community  of 
slave-making  ants,  or  all  would  starve  to  death.  We 
have  no  accounts  in  the  histories  of  ancient  socialist 
communities,  where  the  governing  classes  permitted 
the  governed  classes  to  have  all  the  good  things  to 
eat  and  all  the  good  clothes  to  wear ;  but  on  the  con- 
trary they  were  given  the  coarsest  and  insufficient 
food  and  clothing,  and  were  sometimes  obliged  to 
live  on  grass  and  roots.  How  do  we  know  that  the 
governing  classes  under  a  modern  socialist  regime 
would  treat  the  governed  classes  any  better  than 
under  former  socialist  regimes!  "We  do  not  know 


324  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

it,  and  have  no  reason  to  expect  that  they  would 
be  less  unselfish,  for  it  is  notorious  that  socialist 
leaders  are  the  least  charitable  and  the  least  altruis- 
tic of  any  class  of  our  people.  Those  who  would  con- 
trol the  big  crib  from  which  all  would  feed,  would 
likely  furnish  the  governing  classes  the  best,  the  ten- 
derloins, leaving  the  husks  and  scraps  to  the  gov- 
erned classes,  the  weak-minded.  Does  any  sensible 
man  believe  that  a  return  to  the  primitive  mode  of 
life,  to  communism  and  solialism  in  their  purest  form, 
would  make  men  more  generous  in  their  natures? 
Does  he  believe  that  the  governed  classes  would  live 
in  as  good  houses  as  the  governing  classes?  Hardly. 
The  selfish  natures  of  men  may  not  be  changed  in  a 
day  or  in  a  century.  Our  present  social  conditions 
are  the  outcome  of  evolution  through  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  years. 

Our  fastest  race  horses,  the  fleetest  the  world  has 
ever  known,  have  had  their  fleetness  increased  by 
seconds  through  years  of  careful  selection.  While 
under  a  socialist  regime  competition  would  be  abol- 
ished and  the  workers  would  not  work  for  wages, 
would  not  be  wage  slaves  as  the  socialists  call  it, 
yet  if  they  were  driven  to  work  with  knouts  by  the 
agents  of  the  governing  classes,  the  slavery  would 
be  more  galling  to  the  liberty-loving  man  than  under 
the  competitive  or  wage  slave  system.  Individual 
competition  has  been  the  natural  order  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  throughout  the  long  course  of  evo- 
lution of  life,  but  under  a  socialist  regime  the  compe- 
tition would  be  indirect,  that  is*,  the  men  of  force 


THE  .WHITE  SLAVEEY  325 

of  character  of  the  governing  classes,  would  compete 
for  positions  in  the  different  departments  of  the 
regulating,  productive,  manufacturing  and  distrib- 
uting agencies  of  the  socialist  government.  That 
there  would  be  sharp  competition  for  such  positions 
of  life  tenure,  cannot  be  reasonably  doubted.  Any 
one  will  not  compete  for  a  thing  unless  he  considers 
it  will  be  an  advantage  to  him  to  secure  it,  and  how 
advantageous  such  positions  would  be  to  the  holders 
would  depend  upon  the  skill  of  each  in  manipulating 
it  to  his  personal  gratification.  Any  one  who  doubts 
that  there  would  be  sharp  competition  for  such  posi- 
tions, has  only  to  call  to  mind  the  competition  among 
candidates  for  business  agent  of  a  union,  a  quasi 
socialist  organization,  to  get  an  idea  how  severe  the 
competition  under  pure  socialism  would  be. 

We  heard  the  socialist  philosopher  speak  of  us 
as  wage  slaves  who  talk  about  our  families  and  of 
our  love  and  affection  for  our  wives  and  children, 
as  if  they  were  all  that  makes  life  worth  while,  and 
that  such  notions  are  nonsense  about  which  social- 
ists do  not  bother  themselves ;  that  one  woman  is  as 
good  as  another  to  them,  and  that  if  children  come 
by  association  of  the  sexes,  they  should  be  sent  to  a 
home  and  taken  care  by  the  community.  Then  social- 
ism proposes  to  abolish  the  family  and  the  marriage 
relation  and  substitute  communism,  promiscuity, 
polygamy  and  polyandry,  leaving  the  sexes  to  live 
together  just  like  animals,  or  for  each  of  the  govern- 
ing classes  to  have  as  many  women  as  his  position 
would  attract  to  him.  With  our  views  of  life,  the 


326  THE  WHITE  SLAVERY 

abolition  of  the  family  and  the  marriage  relation,  as 
socialism  proposes,  is  not  attractive,  and  it  would  be 
impossible  for  us  to  have  the  love  and  affection  for 
other  women  that  we  have  for  our  wives,  the  mothers 
of  our  children,  and  we  could  not  have  the  love  and 
affection  for  other  men's  children  that  we  have  for 
our  own.  Even  a  hen  knows  and  discriminates 
against  a  stray  chick  that  gets  into  her  brood.  From 
what  we  know  of  the  history  of  the  human  race,  we 
are  justified  in  believing  that  the  family  as  we  know 
it,  has  been  an  evolution  due  to  conditions  of  envir- 
onments requiring  large  numbers  of  the  same  race 
to  live  in  contact  with  each  other;  that  promiscuity, 
polygamy  and  polyandry,  may  be  thought  of  under 
very  primitive  conditions  and  under  certain  condi- 
tions of  environment ;  but  that  neither  of  these  forms 
of  sex  relation  can  be  thought  of  as  existing  in  the 
highest  type  of  civilization.  Promiscuity  of  the  sex 
relation,  such  as  socialism  seems  to  sanction,  has 
existed  only  among  the  lowest  races  of  men  where 
everything  was  in  common,  and  could  certainly 
never  promote  patriotism  and  strengthen  the  social 
aggregate,  which  has  always  been,  and  always  will 
be  necessary  to  enable  any  social  aggregate  to  main- 
tain its  autonomy.  Politically,  socialism  tends  to 
weaken  the  social  aggregate,  for  it  is  without  patriot- 
ism and  cares  nothing  for  strength  to  maintain  itself 
against  foreign  aggressions.  Its  tendency  is  towards 
feudalism.  A  thoroughly  organized  intelligent  power 
like  Japan  could  easily  conquer  the  rest  of  the  world 
if  the  rest  of  the  world  was  under  a  socialist  regim6. 


THE  WHITE  SLAVERY  327 

Politically,  socialism  tends  to  despotism  under  any 
political  headship  likely  to  develop,  which  might 
or  might  not  put  enough  aggressiveness,  militancy, 
into  it  to  fight  for  its  existence.  All  despotisms  have 
been  more  or  less  socialistic,  for  the  individuality 
of  the  individual  counted  for  nothing.  The  govern- 
ment, which  meant  the  governing  classes,  furnished 
employment  and  food  for  the  governed  classes.  But 
socialism  has  flirted  so  much  with  anarchists  that 
many  people  regard  the  ideals  of  the  two  as  prac- 
tically the  same ;  that  the  political  head  of  socialism 
would  probably  be  frequently  marked  for  assassina- 
tion would  seem  to  be  the  natural  order  of  such  a 
combination.  As  socialism  does  not  presuppose  the 
social  aggregate  divided  into  political  parties,  the 
political  head  would  not  likely  be  elected  more  than 
once,  for  once  in  power,  like  the  head  of  the  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor,  he  would  build  up  a  ma- 
chine that  would  re-elect  him  perpetually.  He 
would  in  return  for  their  electoral  votes  keep  his 
supporters  in  perpetual  positions,  so  that  the  social 
aggregate  would  be  divided  into  a  governing  class 
and  a  governed  class,  like  unionism,  the  child  of 
socialism,  is  to-day.  There  would  be  no  appeal  from 
the  acts  of  the  governing  classes,  and  the  humbler 
members  of  society  would  have  no  better  chance  of 
securing  redress  for  their  grievances,  than  a  mem- 
ber of  the  union  has  of  securing  redress  of  grievances 
against  one  of  its  officials.  Russia  would  be  a  mild 
form  of  despotism  compared  with  the  despotism  and 
slavery  of  the  socialist  democracy  that  is  now  clamor- 


328  THE  WHITE  SLAVEEY 

ing  for  ascendency  and  promising  so  much  to  the 
weak-minded  and  vicious  elements  of  society  and 
impressing  upon  their  minds  that  if  they  work  for 
another  for  wages  that  they  become  wage-slaves. 
c '  We  do  not  feed  from  the  common  crib  and  take  the 
husks  after  the  governing  agents  with  the  knouts 
have  taken  the  best,  and  we  do  not  see  where  we 
would  be  better  off  under  socialism  than  under  indi- 
vidual freedom, "  was  the  parting  shot  of  one  of  the 
workers  as  they  separated,  each  in  a  moment  to 
cross  the  threshold  of  his  happy  home,  and  receive 
the  affectionate  greetings  of  his  wife  and  children. 
As  showing  the  intimate  connection  between  union- 
ism, socialism,  and  anarchism,  we  submit  the  follow- 
ing syllogistic  nut  to  crack : — 

All  socialists  are  unionists. 
Most  unionists  are  socialists, 
All  anarchists  are  socialists, 
Therefore — unionists  are  anarchists. 


The  End. 


X"  TS  T>TT~ 

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